He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.” -Matthew 13:31-33

My eye doctor is in the Beachwood Mall.  I am fairly certain I continue going back because whenever I’m done with my eye appointment, I get to go to the food court, or the Lego store, or some other fun mall activity.  The last time I was there, confirming that in fact, my eyesight is quite bad, I decided to stop by Sephora.

Do you know Sephora?  Entering Sephora is a dazzling experience.  There is makeup and moisturizers and free samples galore.   I happened to be there right as the store was opening and there was a literal line to get in.  I was mostly just browsing, but I had an idea that I might find some kind of lotion for the upcoming winter season.  It gets really dry here in Ohio when the weather gets cold and my skin definitely could use some help.

The trouble with the products at Sephora is they tend to be very expensive.  The success of Sephora is that their products can be very, very effective.

I went to one of those little free testers to put some moisturizer on my hand.  This tiny little tub probably cost $45 dollars. I have no idea what was in it.  But I put a little dab of that on my skin and the entire texture of my skin transformed.

Just right here on the back of my hand, but my skin was smooth.  My skin was soft.  My skin was beautifully hydrated.  And truthfully it was so dramatic that I walked away from whatever that magical product was and didn’t look back.

It’s not magic, it’s science, but I was still genuinely flustered by how this tiny little amount of something could affect my skin so much.  I kept feeling my hand all day.  It made me concerned that I usually have horrible hands or something.  And I honestly understand the price now.  A little of whatever that was goes a long way.

Jesus’ parables about this are almost folksy.  We know a little goes a long way.  If it wasn’t an experience at Sephora, it would be dish soap in a dishwasher (suds everywhere) or  axe body spray (as locker rooms will attest to).

You may notice I tend not to be a lengthy preacher.  In part, it’s because if we hear it in scripture and it makes sense, who am I to complicate it?

A little goes a long way, done and done.

This is almost the fullness of Jesus’ message.  Almost.

Because it’s really not a bad saying, a little goes a long way.  It’ll certainly help your shampoo costs.

When Jesus offers these little parables about a mustard seed and yeast, he’s doing it in the midst of other stories.  And they don’t all have happy endings.  

These stories of a little goes a long way are interspersed with sometimes you try things and it totally fails, like scattering seed on the rocky ground.  Or sometimes you go and try and tell important things to the people who love you, and then they reject you in your hometown.

So to edit the saying, Jesus would be more on board with: A little goes a long way–mostly.

All of these things are being taught in the context of what the Kingdom of God or heaven is like.  Kingdom is a tough word for us to use, because we don’t live in a kingdom.  You’ll hear me call it the kin-dom sometimes.  Feel free to think about it as a government, or country, or some kind of overarching collection of people that has been brought together.   The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed, Jesus says.

This kingdom part is critical.  These stories aren’t just for our personal enjoyment and satisfaction.  They’re about some kind of community organization.  They’re about people who hear the message of God and then shape their lives around it.  Jesus gives us some kind of idea of what that organizing together looks like.  

In that space a little goes a long way.  

This to me is a profoundly hopeful take on people.  I need this kind of perspective.  

The philosophy of small actions having an impact is a guardrail against apathy. It’s a guardrail against inaction.  It’s a way of being we need as a small church to remember our mustard seeds, our yeast, can have an impact in a world of despair.

Because I’ve gone to bake bread before.  And I got all the ingredients from the cupboard, lined them up on our kitchen island.  I measured out the warm water to pour over the yeast and allow it to bloom.  And then I’ve come back to find that the yeast is not doing much of anything.  No bubbles, no foaming.  

And I’ve also planted seeds expecting many flowers and grasses and growing things.  And I’ve planted and I’ve watered and I’ve received dirt in response.

But neither experience has led me to never bake or garden again.  I understand that a little goes a long way, mostly.  And so I try again.

We vote and it doesn’t go our way.  We vote and the world changes.  We donate money hoping it gets to the right people and find out it filled someone’s refrigerator.  We don’t cut off contact, we instead keep making phone calls and sending emails and eventually they respond.  We wave hi, we don’t cross the street.  We keep showing up even when it’s small.  

The kingdom of heaven does not seem to be concerned with mighty, coercive, dominating power.  And so neither should we.  This scripture powerfully reminds us that the small, thoughtful orientation of your life toward all that is good does matter.  That your steady choices of offering kindness matters.  That justice is built slowly and steadily.  That we bake and grow and trust that a 100% guarantee of success would come from an imposing power we don’t want to build our lives around.  A little bit goes a long way.

Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.

But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will bring about at the right time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honour and eternal dominion. Amen.

As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.

1 Timothy 6:6-19

I’m looking for clues.  I’m snooping through this letter like it was written for me, because maybe it has been.  This is a church letter for a leader who has inherited a church.  This isn’t the first generation, this is the second, or third.  The fervor of the early years has worn off.  It’s a lot more tedious now–more rules, more morality.  This whole church thing doesn’t seem to be going away so now someone has to figure out what to do with it.  

I feel this letter deeply as a young church leader.  It was just last month I did some of my own rearranging.  I carried the desk chair that had been in my office over to the main office area.  I had sat in it for five years–it’s a nice office chair.  But it never fit me.  I’m 5’2”.  My predecessor is not.  I could never quite get comfortable.  And for some reason, just recently, I decided to fix it.  I lifted that chair out and over (quite glad none of you saw that actually, it wasn’t very dignified) and moved in a chair that better suited my stature.  

It has made my life so much better.  

Even if you’ve inherited something, even if you’re working from old systems, you’ve got to have a good foundation.  

At least that’s what this scripture, this letter tells me.  

To be truthful, I’m not sure I trust this letter entirely.  I don’t know when the last time you read the whole of 1 Timothy, but it’s a doozy.  You’ll find details about what to wear for worship, who can be a deacon, and some interesting ideas about women.  There are plenty of pieces of practical advice I’m happy to file away as historical relics.  But there’s this underlying sense of a group of people left to actually figure out the rules that I can’t help but sympathize with, even if I’ve updated those rules a bit.  

I think the file folders with my handwriting on them in the office over there, the job descriptions I’ve written, the bulletins I’ve cataloged.  

I’ve been awake at two in the morning thinking about how we need an employee handbook.

I get the spirit of this letter even if we can disagree about the details.  So I’m listening to this ending.  Where it’s not just an outline of the exact rules, but some admonitions about the foundation.  

pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness

be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share

this is the firm foundation for the coming age

For all of those moralistic details from earlier, there is a looseness that shows what the guiding principles really are.  You can’t hold too tightly to money.  You can’t be so rigid you can’t be kind.  You have to be open and generous. 

This is the foundation that will endure.

I’m reading this hoping it’s true, because it’s not feeling like much is enduring these days.  I am part of the generation that has been blamed for killing cable tv, paper napkins, and department stores.  Fair, I suppose.  But I’m more concerned about the potential death of democracy, or retirement systems, or, you know, the existential threat that is climate change.  It’s hard to see what’s enduring, what’s foundational, what’s good.

I’m reading back to listen to what it was like in another tumultuous time, when things weren’t going as expected.  I’m reading this, hoping that some of it actually is for me.  Because I want to know what will endure.

I want to know that our organizing and our adapting matters.  I want to know that I’m not just rearranging chairs.

Be rich in good deeds, be rich in good deeds, I repeat to myself. 

Can I have fifty bucks to pay my phone bill, can you come on a Saturday to play piano, can I borrow some chairs.  

Yes, I say, thinking, be rich in good deeds, be rich in good deeds.

Can you help me pay for top surgery, can we host this at your house, can you help with my mother’s funeral.

Yes, I say, thinking, be rich in good deeds, be rich in good deeds.  

And there’s a way of doing this that doesn’t feel like emptying, but like rooting.  Like locking into that thing that you could do endlessly, because it’s so core, so foundational.  It’s not arrogant, but it’s secure.  It’s generous, because it feels safe, it feels true.  

You’ve inherited so much that you haven’t chosen.  And I know you’re trying to make sense of this all. 

All I can offer is what I have found, from looking beyond my own life into the letters of faithful people from long ago.  And I cannot in good conscience advise you to do exactly what they did.  They were organizing for their time and place.  We can even learn from their mistakes.  But we can also hear their wisdom passed through the shifting of so many generations.  

pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness

be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share

this is the firm foundation for the coming age

We will adapt and organize the world and the church we have inherited.  We will make what we need for this time and place, knowing even in its newness it is an old familiar cycle.  We will find underneath the change the foundation that is good. 

There may God bless us.

Amen.

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Luke 10:38-42

There are some nights when I go to bed, thinking I’m about to read a book for 10 or 15 minutes. I’m the type of person who always has a book I’m reading, a status made only more consistent because of how I can so quickly pull up a book from the library on my phone. Yet some nights, it’s not 10 or 15 minutes. Having made the wise choice to try to go to sleep at a reasonable time, to get my nine hours, I find myself instead awake in the early hours of the morning having instead just read an entire book. Hours and hours of reading. You might think, wow, good for you! Way to read! But I’d actually be a little more concerned, and have been, about how I’m stealing those hours of sleep just to have a little time to do what I love.

I’ve seen this phenomenon referenced. It’s these stolen nighttime hours. People aren’t always reading, mind you, but they’re certainly taking advantage of the time. There’s something about the freedom we feel late at night, after the work emails have gone quiet and the kids are sleeping, that suddenly, this is the uninterrupted time. People gleefully stay awake just to finally do what they want. This is the free time no one yet has commodified. And so there are people all over finally paying attention to what they want, watching that movie or reading that book or generally forgoing sleep just to have a focused moment, because who is going to call you at one in the morning?

I certainly know that feeling, to me which feels like the freedom to focus. Reading books is one of the great joys of my life and yet there often feels like little time in daylight hours to sit down and consume books in the way that I love. Instead, my daytime is about managing meal preparation, phone notifications, multiple jobs, and social and family connections.

There’s something a little depressing to think that my best reading is relegated to these midnight hours. I’ve often wondered if there was a way that I could use what is probably my best skill (reading quickly, joyfully, and broadly) to serve others. So far, that skill and attention surrounds the reality of what I actually do on a day to day. There’s just too much else. I’m distracted and busy.

It would be simple for me to think that this predicament is unique. Yet we can see the issues of attention and busyness in what is likely my favorite story in the bible, that of Mary and Martha.

At the heart of this story is the conflicting nature of attention and distraction. Mary, the one who is able to sit and listen. Martha, the one who simply cannot stand still. Jesus, who gently calls the sisters to their fullest, most attentive lives.

I wonder what that form of spirituality was creating in the lives of these sisters. Because there’s an interpretation of this story that falls in line with one of the traps of our current day. This is the lie of self-care. Here’s what I mean. We can look at unjust wages, or burnt out caregivers, or a world of inaccessibility and somehow think that the solution is on the individual. To just relax. To take a bubble bath or eat an indulgent meal. And suddenly all that stress would melt away. But of course that’s the lie of self-care, when what is so often needed is community care. To actually change the system that required so much work and burnout in the first place.

And so I find hopefulness in seeing that Jesus did not tell Martha to relax or just calm down. But instead he says this cryptic phrase, “Only one thing is needed.” This to me speaks more of attention, of focus, and moving from individual distraction to collective attention. For Martha to refuse labor perhaps then is less of a break for her to catch her individual breath, but to recognize what would be needed for the radical message of Jesus to actually take hold.

Think of it this way. We know that Jesus stood against much of the injustice of the Roman Empire. And yet, in his teaching, he did not simply organize a five step plan to take down the system (although I often wish he had). Instead he taught in parables! Parables! Long slow teaching that requires careful thought. He opened the door slowly but surely for people to find radical change through slowness, through one dinner, one story, one moment of patience at a time. Not to mention that he didn’t even really kick off his ministry until the age of 30! What was he even doing in the meantime? What was he cultivating? And yet somehow it was all at the right time.

There is a performance art piece called the Trainee by Pilvi Takala that I shared with you in the morning email–I invite you to take a look. In this delightfully subversive and honestly funny piece, Takala spent time integrating herself into a workplace, only after a month to cease acting in standard, productive ways. Instead, she did things like ride the elevator, up and down, up and down. Alternatively she sat in a single location just gazing off into space. How did she describe it to people when they would come up to her and ask what she was doing? Brain work. And unsurprisingly, her coworkers did not become cocospiritors, but instead panicked. In an inter-office email sent out about her behavior, a coworker described her actions as “weird and funny, but also scary to some extent.”

As it turns out, focused non action is weird, funny, and scary. There’s a power to stopping and focusing. Just ask anyone who has participated in a boycott or strike. Collective action is fundamentally about focus–about drawing attention away from individual distraction and constant movement and instead toward a singular focus. In recent years there have been many “die-ins”--moments of protesting police brutality. These often are large groups of people who find a public space and lie down on the ground, unmoving, blocking the typical movement of those who suddenly are drawn to focus, to pay attention.

This is not scrambling to find free time in the middle of the night. This is deliberate action, in the middle of what could be endless work.

To stop, focus, listen, redirect–in all of this is power. It’s more than a nice idea.

This simple story of two sisters reminds me of all these things. It reminds me of how to listen to Jesus’ voice, reminding, only one thing is needed. It is not a story, I believe, about shaming Martha. It is a story of rediscovering power.

Martha, too, can stop. And so can we.

Community Prayer:

Stop us, Lord, from what we are doing. Stop us from participating in unjust systems of hurry, where labor is exploited and workers are harmed. Stop us from believing the lie that the world needs our frenzy. Stop us from expecting unfair actions from others.

Call us instead to the attentiveness that the world needs. Time at your feet is not wasted, God.

Today I pray for each of those gathered in our community. You know all who gather by name. You can call each person gently, insistently, so that way they may know your teaching. Do so, Lord Jesus. Speak and be near to us. Let us hear your teaching so we are not guided only by our own wishes, but by your transformation of the worth.

Help us know you in this time of Holy Communion. Let it be for us an experience of the mystery beyond what we know, that we can taste the goodness of your Kingdom.

Challenge us to become your body, to know that there is no community unless we make it, unless we draw our attention to one another and your presence. Let us understand this sacred time as a chance to begin that practice anew.

Amen.

35 But someone will say, “How are the dead raised? What kind of body will they have when they come back?” 36 Look, fool! When you put a seed into the ground, it doesn’t come back to life unless it dies. 37 What you put in the ground doesn’t have the shape that it will have, but it’s a bare grain of wheat or some other seed. 38 God gives it the sort of shape that he chooses, and he gives each of the seeds its own shape. 39 All flesh isn’t alike. Humans have one kind of flesh, animals have another kind of flesh, birds have another kind of flesh, and fish have another kind. 40 There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies. The heavenly bodies have one kind of glory, and the earthly bodies have another kind of glory. 41 The sun has one kind of glory, the moon has another kind of glory, and the stars have another kind of glory (but one star is different from another star in its glory).

42 It’s the same with the resurrection of the dead: a rotting body is put into the ground, but what is raised won’t ever decay. 43 It’s degraded when it’s put into the ground, but it’s raised in glory. It’s weak when it’s put into the ground, but it’s raised in power. 44 It’s a physical body when it’s put into the ground, but it’s raised as a spiritual body. If there’s a physical body, there’s also a spiritual body. 45 So it is also written, The first human, Adam, became a living person, and the last Adam became a spirit that gives life. 46 But the physical body comes first, not the spiritual one—the spiritual body comes afterward. 47 The first human was from the earth made from dust; the second human is from heaven. 48 The nature of the person made of dust is shared by people who are made of dust, and the nature of the heavenly person is shared by heavenly people. 49 We will look like the heavenly person in the same way as we have looked like the person made from dust.

50 This is what I’m saying, brothers and sisters: Flesh and blood can’t inherit God’s kingdom. Something that rots can’t inherit something that doesn’t decay.

1 Corinthians 15:35-50

Written and Preached by Taylor Buckner

Scriptural Context

Over the past few weeks, we have studied a few sections of scripture from 1 Corinthians, so you might already have a bit of context for the scripture we’re looking at today. The book of 1 Corinthians is a letter written by the apostle Paul to the newly founded church in Corinth. Paul’s goal with this letter is to clarify some confusions of the Corinthians and help unify the early Church in it’s beliefs. Chapter 15 is where Paul begins to discuss the topic of resurrection, first addressing the resurrection of Christ and then the resurrection to come. Today’s scripture, beginning at verse 35, directs us towards the resurrection of the body. The Corinthians want to know what resurrection means for them in a physical sense.

Culture

35 But someone will say, “How are the dead raised? What kind of body will they have when they come back?”

For those of us who have grown up in the Christian tradition, resurrection is a familiar concept. Even if we don’t have a total grasp of what it means or how it happens, resurrection is a common topic of discussion--we have it in our minds and our vocabulary. But if you try to strike up a conversation with a stranger about resurrection, they might just think you’re crazy. That’s kind of what we see happening in today’s scripture with the church in Corinth.

Many of the church’s early members and apostles came from Jewish backgrounds where resurrection of the dead was a core doctrine, and the teachings of the early Christian church centered around Jesus’ resurrection. For the Corinthians, though, resurrection was an unfamiliar idea that they approached with confusion. The question “how are the dead raised?” could better be understood as the Corinthians asking “how is resurrection possible?”

Before digging too deeply into the idea of resurrection, I’d just like to talk about bodies--living bodies and dead bodies. Because the way we feel about physical bodies affects our openness to the idea of a bodily resurrection. Let’s consider the view of the physical body in the Jewish and Corinthian traditions:

Jewish Tradition

• Body sanctification

• Integration of body and soul

• Law governing food, body, physical life

• Religious community is highly involved in funeral and burial

• Washing and preparation

• Body wrapped in shroud (unfinished wood casket if necessary) and placed directly into the earth

• Quick and natural return of the body to dust, no embalming or cremation

Corinthian Tradition (Hellenistic)

• Mind-body dualism

• Separation of mind and body

• The body as a prison, mind good, body bad

• Spiritual leaders were not involved in the funeral and burial process because they believed the spiritual world could become tainted by death

• Tile and limestone for graves, sarcophagi, chamber tombs

• Cremation was also common

“The view of radical dualism sees the body as corrupt and separate from oneself, while the view of sanctification sees the body as holy, worthy of respect, and integral to one's being.” (Jacobson) In simple terms, we could say that the Corinthian/Hellenistic tradition promotes body shaming while the Jewish/early Christian traditions promotes body positivity. The Corinthians’ struggle to accept the teaching of bodily resurrection is understandable. If they’re accustomed to viewing their bodies as prisons, as something bad that places limitations on their existence, death of the body offers freedom from imprisonment.

To be honest, sometimes a body can feel like a prison. Our bodies don’t always move the way we want them to, they get hurt, they feel pain. We spend time maintaining our bodies, cleaning them, and nursing them back to health only for them to fall ill again. At times, we might wish for an existence that didn’t include hauling around the meat bags that are our bodies.

Within Paul’s writings, there are suggestions that he feels similarly about his own body. In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul speaks of an affliction he has. He calls it a “thorn in the flesh,'' and scholars continue to debate about what this affliction might have been, whether it was a physical injury or some other hardship. Paul describes the torment caused by this thorn in his flesh and the weakness he has experienced because of it. Paul grew up in a Jewish family where he theoretically would have held the traditional Jewish view of body sanctification, but we also see him write about his body with disdain.

The thing we need to understand about Paul is that he serves as sort of a link between the Hellentistic and Jewish worldviews. Paul was born in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey) to a family of Pharisees. It is believed that his first language was Greek, but he was educated in Jerusalem from a young age and spoke Hebrew as well. While on his missionary journeys, Paul learned from Hellenistic philosophers and drew on this knowledge to help new converts understand his teachings.

Here in today’s scripture, Paul is trying to help the Corinthians understand his teaching of the resurrected body. He starts out with a metaphor about seeds. You can find a more in-depth analysis of the first part of our scripture in the weekly email from Thursday if you’re interested. In my writing, I reframed the metaphor in the context of baking bread, but the premise remains the same. In Paul’s farming metaphor, we sow a seed, and although we anticipate its growth, we rely on God’s transforming power to turn it into a plant. In baking, we prepare a dough based on how we want our bread to turn out, but we practice patience, trust that our dough will rise, and rely on a transformative process that is out of our control.

After his metaphor, Paul continues:

“42 It’s the same with the resurrection of the dead: a rotting body is put into the ground, but what is raised won’t ever decay. 43 It’s degraded when it’s put into the ground, but it’s raised in glory. It’s weak when it’s put into the ground, but it’s raised in power. 44 It’s a physical body when it’s put into the ground, but it’s raised as a spiritual body. If there’s a physical body, there’s also a spiritual body.” (CEB)

Resurrection is an unfamiliar idea for the Corinthians. They can’t imagine what a resurrected body could be like, but Paul offers a few straightforward comparisons to consider. The Corinthians can agree that a dead body put into the ground is rotting, degraded, and weak. Paul contrasts this with the resurrected body that won’t decay and is raised in glory and power. He meets the Corinthians where they are in their beliefs about the physical body being a weakness. The fear of weakness is what makes the Corinthians hesitant about accepting the doctrine of resurrection.

Can we see the Corinthians' fear and skepticism reflected in modern times? According to a 2021 survey by the Pew Research Center, approximately 80% of Americans believe in some form of afterlife. We see a wide range of beliefs about the afterlife including heaven, hell, reincarnation, eternal spiritual existence separate from the physical world, and many more. Reincarnation is one afterlife belief that does revolve around the physical body, the process where the body returns to the earth to then become a new physical body. But most beliefs about the afterlife point to something separate from the physical world that we know. Even if we don’t necessarily view our bodies as prisons, humanity maintains a common thread of hope for something more than this physical life after death.

The Corinthians were not the only people hoping to escape the weakness of their flesh. Paul spoke personally about the weakness he’d felt, and he speaks to the weakness that we each experience. As I read Paul’s discourse here about the weakness of the physical body and power of the spiritual body, I can’t help but think also of Paul's writing about the thorn in his flesh. He explains in 2 Corinthians how he had pleaded with the Lord to remove his affliction but ultimately reframed his weakness into power:

“[The Lord] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses...for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10, NRSV)

Our weakness, rather than being a separation between us and God, can be reframed as an opportunity to experience God’s power. Human weakness is the dwelling place of God’s presence. It’s only by recognizing weakness that we hope for something more.

Paul continues his explanation of resurrection to the Corinthians:

“45 So it is also written, The first human, Adam, became a living person, and the last Adam became a spirit that gives life. 46 But the physical body comes first, not the spiritual one—the spiritual body comes afterward. 47 The first human was from the earth made from dust; the second human is from heaven. 48 The nature of the person made of dust is shared by people who are made of dust, and the nature of the heavenly person is shared by heavenly people. 49 We will look like the heavenly person in the same way as we have looked like the person made from dust.” (CEB)

When Paul uses the terms “flesh” and “body” in contrast to “spirit,” we could assume that he is referring to literal flesh and the physical body. But some scholars argue that when Paul writes about “flesh” he means not the physical body but the sinful human nature inherited from Adam (Clark). Rather than discussing a body made of flesh, we might consider a body animated by flesh, or sin. For the one body is animated by the sin nature, and the other body animated by new life in the spirit. Paul says that “the nature of the person made of dust is shared by people who are made of dust” (verse 48a), and we can see sinful human nature reflected within ourselves. But these bodies animated by sinful flesh give us hope of a new body, one that reflects the heavenly.

I wonder what it might mean for our bodies to be animated by the Holy Spirit. Paul describes the last Adam, Christ, as a life-giving spirit. Knowing that the Holy Spirit is among us now might “open the way to a perception of the present realities of resurrection in the present age and in this mortal body” (Sloan) Resurrection will bring us into a new order, but “the transformation to the new order actually begins now by the power” of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us (Sloan). In our earthly, human weakness, the Holy Spirit makes its home. It stirs life and hope into us and begins transforming us. Our bodies retain their shape, but we are transformed with Christ in our hearts.

When we think about resurrection, we generally put our hope in the future, a transformation that is to come. But the truth is that we have already begun to be transformed. When we allow the Holy Spirit to guide our lives, our weakness becomes power, our degradation becomes glory, and our mortality becomes immortal. We hope in the glory of our resurrected spiritual bodies because we can already see the goodness of the Holy Spirit at work in our earthly bodies. If we can see the life-giving work of the Spirit dwelling in our human weakness, we can only imagine the possibilities of a new order with bodies fully animated by the Holy Spirit.

Paul concludes this section of his letter:

“50 This is what I’m saying, brothers and sisters: Flesh and blood can’t inherit God’s kingdom. Something that rots can’t inherit something that doesn’t decay.” (CEB)

Our weakness and decay cannot inherit God’s kingdom, but we have hope because we know that we are much more than our human frailty. Our bodies have reflected the image of the person made of dust, but our hearts have been transformed already to reflect the heavenly. We hope in the resurrection, not as a future escape from our weakness, but trusting in the transformative process of the Holy Spirit that is already at work in our lives now.

Gordon Clark, Thales to Dewey (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957). Quoted in Ronald H. Nash, Christianity and the Hellenistic World (Dallas: Probe Ministries, 1984).

Jacobson HL, Hall ME, Anderson TL, Willingham MM. Temple or Prison: Religious Beliefs and Attitudes Toward the Body. J Relig Health. 2016 Dec;55(6):2154-73.

Sloan, Robert B. "Resurrection in I Corinthians." Southwestern Journal of Theology , vol. 26.1, 1983, pp. 69-91.