Reflection for the Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time C or the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany

Readings: Jeremiah 17: 5-8 (RM) or 5-10 (RCL); Psalm 1; I Corinthians 15: 12, 16-20 (RM) or 12-20 (RCL); Luke 6: 17, 20-26 (RM) or 17-26 (RCL).

“Really, I just cannot believe that when I die, I will no longer exist as an individual. The older I become, the more I just cannot accept that.”

The speaker was a 64-year-old, distinguished professor of theology. The remark came as an aside while he was giving a course lecture. It was striking for us students for two reasons: first, because this gentleman had already had at least two apparent TIA’s, mini-strokes, while teaching our class. For this reason a few of us developed an emergency plan we could put into effect if some day, God forbid, the professor was incapacitated. Second, personal revelations just were not done in formal academic discourse, certainly not in a European university at that time.

So what does happen after we die? What lives on? Does anything of our personal uniqueness live on, apart from official records and others’ memories?

This question caused much debate among the first generation of Christians, even those who had heard it from first-hand witnesses to the resurrected Christ’s appearances. Paul struggled to persuade the Corinthians, who were largely of non-Jewish origin, and not party to the Pharisees vs. Sadducees arguments over life after death, that Christ’s resurrection was real. In this week’s second reading, we see Paul launch into a detailed argument about what this means for them. But he doesn’t leave it there. In next week’s reading he fairly twists himself into a logical pretzel trying to counter the unhelpful influence of Greek philosophy on these new Christians. The issue is the nature of personal life after death, and of resurrection.

What we’ll do is take a quick glance at what the issues were for these Corinthians, our ancestors in faith, and see what it might say to our questions about life beyond death in a Christian perspective.

In last week’s second reading, Paul dealt with claims that there is no resurrection from the dead because some Corinthians believed that their baptism “to new life” meant that “resurrection” had happened already. This week Paul spells out that Christ’s resurrection from the dead means resurrection for all believers – from the dead. Many of these folks thought that the Christian faith was only about this life, not the future. And those who were influenced by Greek thought were horrified at any idea that the dead human body could rise. Greek dualism meant “body = bad, spirit = good.” Bodies die. Once you’re dead, you’re dead.

In this week’s reading Paul argues that if there is no such thing as resurrection from the dead, then Christ never rose, which means that Christians who die have simply perished, and that Christian faith has no credibility. In next week’s reading he works the argument from the opposite angle by grasping Greek dualism by its proverbial horns, to distinguish an earthly body (Adam) from a heavenly body (Christ).

In verses 35-38 he uses a familiar agricultural image: the seed. A seed, buried in the ground, has one sort of body, but the plant that grows up from the seed has quite another. One came from the other, but it’s not the same body. A Christian who died would be buried, like a seed, in order to rise to a new and transformed life, beyond time and decay. It’s maybe not a perfect analogy. But we’re up against a mystery that defies easy either-or’s.

Glance through any obituary page and you’ll see references to a “Celebration of Life” to be held in memory of the deceased. The term “Celebration of Life” in its original sense is not a funeral. And it’s not like the PowerPoint photo show that runs at the funeral home or during the luncheon, for example. This is a service designed to bypass any belief in resurrection, or any reference to an afterlife. It’s a ritual that evades the religious questions. The person’s life is celebrated because, for the participants, that’s all there is. Just one shot at life. No more. No future.

For our ancestors, as for us, there’s something distinctly countercultural about a belief in resurrection. It contradicts our sensory data. We bury or cremate the person, and how do you come back from that? We’re forced to open up beyond what we see and feel physically, to recognize that the mystery of life transcends anything we can imagine, and (this is where faith comes in) it is in God. This gives Christians a glimpse at a dimension that would prove opaque without at least some openness to what we can sense dimly, but cannot always prove.

Oh — and the professor, God love him, lived another twenty years.

© Susan K. Roll

This Reflection has been lightly edited from that of February 13, 2022.