What the Resurrection of Jesus Tells Us
About Enjoying Life
a sermon on Genesis 1.27—2.4 & 1 Timothy 4.1-5
by David C. Mauldin
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama
I have read of several people who came to faith in Christ unwillingly. They came
because they believed. They recognized the truth of the gospel and felt
compelled, but they were reluctant because they expected the fun to be over.
Becoming a Christian, they thought, meant giving up everything pleasurable and
doing a lot of dreary religious stuff. Happily, they learned they had been
mistaken, but it is a common mistake.
I constantly say that God calls all people to three things: faith in Jesus
Christ, holy living, and ministry. Of the three, holy living is the one that
scares people. Faith is a good thing, right? I could use some of that.
Ministry—serving others in Jesus’ name—that could be rewarding. But holy
living—what’s that about? It doesn’t sound pleasant.
John Wesley was as stern and serious a Christian as you would ever want to meet,
but once he met a man who went even beyond him. Wesley criticized this man for
being too strict, and the man wrote a letter defending his practice. Here is
part of it: “He who will be Christ’s disciple must absolutely deny himself. It
was once a great denial to me, not to go to a play, or to other diversions; but
this is now no self-denial at all. … I plainly see that every hour produces
occasions of self-pleasing … For instance: In the morning, it is a great self
denial to rise out of a warm bed; but if I do not, I am immediately condemned as
a slothful servant … [when listening to a sermon] it is pleasing to see who is
here, who there; but if I do let my eye wander, I become cold and lifeless … In
walking the streets, I can please myself, by looking this way and that; on this
chariot, that house and picture; but if I deny myself for Christ’s sake, his
consolations abound with me.” He goes on to list “vain and trifling thoughts”
among the things he does to allow himself. At mealtime he always chooses the
food he likes the least, and eats only enough to live, so as not to enjoy it.
How’s that for a model of the Christian life? If you enjoy it, it must be bad!
Granted he is an extreme case, but that notion seems stuck in people’s minds.
And it is really an odd thing too, because it should not be so. That man wanted
to follow Jesus; and Jesus went to parties, enjoyed meals with friends, tuned
water into wine, and above all was a Jew. Jews in the first century (and every
century) believed life and the things that sustain it are good gifts from our
loving Creator. God created, and he saw that it was very good. According to
Genesis, God invented the idea of rest. If Wesley’s friend had been around on
the seventh day of creation, he would have called God slothful! In the Jewish
understanding, which was Jesus’ understanding, life is good and the good things
in it are evidence of God’s love. Now of course the world is broken because of
sin. But Jesus came to take care of that. When the Father raised him bodily from
the dead, he was both redeeming and affirming the goodness of creation. We have
bodies, and that is good. We live in an environment that sustains our bodily
existence, and that is good too.
During the time of Jesus’ ministry, the prevailing opinion was much different.
The world then was shaped by Greek culture, and the Greek idea was this: The
world is evil; life is bad; and your body is a prison for your soul. The Greeks
had a “spirit is good; body is bad” mentality. Jesus taught that we can sin both
with our bodies and our hearts, but we can also glorify God with both.
Now here is the crazy twist. For a variety of reasons, Christianity has most
often been more influenced by the Greek way of thinking than the Hebrew. That’s
where the monastic tradition comes from. I do not want to knock the monastic
tradition, because that might be the way to go for some people; but it is not
necessarily a higher level of holiness. Early in church history the desert
fathers thought the church was too corrupted by the world, so they went out into
the desert to live holy lives of self-denial, barely eating and drinking enough
to stay alive.
From the 11th century until the Reformation, Western Christianity insisted on
celibate clergy. The Roman Catholic Church still does. Why should we suppose
celibacy is any holier than marital fidelity? It isn’t. They are different
callings, and some are called to each, no doubt. But one is not holier than the
other.
Don’t forget our Protestant tradition. Drinking, card playing, dancing,
traveling on the Sabbath, and giggling in church are among the heinous sins
condemned from our pulpits in recent memory. The constitution of the
Presbyterian Church once demanded that ministers have a “grave demeanor.” Why do
we hold on to the notion that anything to do with the body is evil? Why do we
suspect that anything enjoyable is sinful? And how can we chart a course between
senseless self-denial that is ungrateful for God’s good gifts on one hand and
sinful indulgence on the other? That’s the topic for our sermon today.
As you know, this is the Easter season, and therefore the perfect time to
consider these questions. The resurrection of Jesus affects everything. In fact,
it provides the answer to this morning’s questions. My main idea is: The
resurrection of Jesus frees us to enjoy creation and to glorify God in our use
of it. My outline is a simple two points. First, how the resurrection frees us
to enjoy creation. Second, how it frees us to glorify God in our use of it.
The resurrection of Jesus sets us free to enjoy creation. How? The resurrection
affirms the goodness of creation. I read to you part of the creation account in
Genesis. If I had read the whole thing, you would have heard a constant theme
over and over: God looked and saw that it was good. God created our bodies. God
gave us an environment to sustain us. God gave us food. Life is not a curse.
Life is good. We are meant to find pleasure in the beauty of nature, music and
the arts, movement and touch, friendship and family, work and play, food, and
all the rest of God’s gifts. Certainly as we enjoy them we should receive them
for what they are, gifts from God. And we should thank God for them and honor
him in their use. There is such a thing as sin, but it is not a sin to use God’s
gifts as he intended.
God raised Jesus bodily from the dead. His promise to us is resurrection and new
creation. Our resurrection bodies will not be less real than the bodies we have
now, but rather more real. Paul calls our present bodies tents, and our
resurrection bodies buildings [2 Cor 5.1].
In Romans 8, Paul writes about the plight of creation. All creation is subject
to futility because of human sin [8.20]. Reading Genesis, you can see where he
got this idea. Human beings were created in the image of God. We were to be
co-rulers with God. God gave us dominion over his wonderful creation. This world
is the context for our embodied life. It is our home. We were meant to enjoy God
and the world he gave us. Sin not only broke our relationship with God, it also
disrupted our relationship with creation. When the human race, which was
supposed to care for and oversee creation, fell into sin, creation itself
suffered.
The Good News is: Jesus’ resurrection means the end of that futility. It is the
beginning and the promise of new creation. The biblical picture of the end of
history is a new heaven and a new earth, joined together, with God’s glory
filling everything. Somehow, in the last 200 years, Christians have started
reading the Bible wrong. Everywhere you turn in Protestant churches these days
you find the idea that in the end God will rescue his people from the sinking
ship that is this world and then send it to the bottom—as if this world is
somehow bad, as if God had been mistaken to create it in the first place. I ask
you: Which better reveals God’s glory—to rescue a few and then destroy the
created world, or to redeem the created world along with his children?
Jesus did not appear to his disciples as a ghost, saying, ‘I escaped my body and
this awful world, and if you follow me you can too.” He ate breakfast with them
and said, “Touch my hands; touch my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
God created this world. God saw that it was very good. Sin wrecked havoc with
human beings and creation, but Jesus has conquered. Nothing could have affirmed
the goodness of creation more than the resurrection of Jesus.
Our reading in 1 Timothy warns against false teaching. The author gets pretty
heated leading up to it. He rages about “deceitful spirits,” “teaching of
demons,” and “hypocrisy of liars.” Whatever bee is loose in his bonnet has him
fighting mad. And what is this abominable, godless heresy? Some teachers are
telling Christians they ought not marry but be celibate; and they are demanding
Christians abstain from foods. This may mean they were trying to get Christians
to follow Jewish kosher food laws, but I doubt it because of the prohibition of
marriage. Jews never did that. More likely we have a case of some folks in the
first century who had ideas like Wesley’s friend who thought that if you enjoy
anything, it must be sin. Thus, they told Christians not to enjoy marriage or
food, and if they prohibited those things, you can bet they were against every
other kind of pleasure too. The body is evil, they reasoned, and we honor God by
denying it every good thing.
Such blasphemy the author of 1 Timothy cannot tolerate. The truth is, God
created both marriage and food (and a lot of other good things we could name)
and gave them to us. We are to receive them with thanksgiving. “Everything
created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected provided it is received
with thanksgiving.”
The Christian life is a life of freedom. We are free to enjoy the good things
God has given us. Both creation and resurrection affirm the goodness of
creation.
This leads to our second point. Not only are we free to enjoy creation. We are
free to honor God by how we use it.
Not everything we can do honors God. Not everything is good and beneficial. Some
of the things we do hurt other people, offend God, and damage us in the process.
We have a handy little word that sums all this up: sin. The problem of sin is
not that God put us in a horrible world full of temptations or that our bodies
are somehow evil. The problem is that we like to abuse the good gifts God has
given us. Sin is as much a function of the soul and heart as it is the body. We
abuse God’s gifts, and we do so in a creative variety of ways.
Sometimes we love the good things in life too much. When this happens, we take
something good God has given us and put it in God’s place at the center of our
lives. We end up as servants to whatever it is we put in God’s place. One
example of this is the way some people care too much about what other people
think. God gave us the fellowship of other human beings. He made us social
creatures, capable of caring for one another. But what happens when your social
group becomes all important? How often I have heard of teenagers doing something
stupid they never would have done on their own—and why? Because of their
friends. They wanted to fit in. They wanted to belong. So they take drugs or
steal a car. They knew it was wrong, but they did it anyway, because they could
not and would not sin against their peer group. It’s not just young people.
Mature adults do it too, in more subtle ways. And this is merely one example.
Something good becomes evil when it is elevated to the place only God should be.
Other times we sin by using God’s gifts selfishly. In this scenario, we put
ourselves into God’s place and make his gifts serve us, instead of serving him
and his purposes. I’m sure you can think of hundreds of examples. We misuse
God’s gifts when we use them without regard for others. This is what Paul told
his churches over and over: As Christians you are free, but you are not free to
destroy one another.
OK, I have made the point that we often abuse God’s gifts and do not honor him.
How do we honor him and what does the resurrection of Jesus have to do with it?
Quite a lot, as it turns out.
The resurrection of Jesus frees us to honor God with the good things of
creation—everything including food, rest, beauty, the arts, sports, medicine,
law, relationships, family, sex, work, play, building things, money, and more. I
can think of at least three ways it does this.
1. The resurrection proves there is more to reality than what you see. There is
more to life than this world and its pleasures. If the material world were all
there is to reality, and this life were all you get, then living selfishly makes
sense. Eat, drink, and be merry; for tomorrow we die. Right? But we know life is
not that bleak. When we make choices about how to live, we factor God and his
promises into the equation. I do not have to grab all the pleasure I can as life
rushes past me. I can enjoy the good things God sends my way in ways that honor
him and his purposes, because I know that they are merely hints of greater
blessings to come. The pleasures of this life are pitifully small compared to
the glory of God’s kingdom. It is like the difference between showing a kid a
brochure of Disney World and taking her there. This life is the brochure.
2. The resurrection proves that your body, your neighbor, and the created world
are objects of God’s love. Often people engaged in self-destructive behavior
say, “It’s my life. It’s my body.” But what if it isn’t? What if God created you
and has plans for you? What if God has endowed you with the dignity of his own
image? He has. That affects what you are free to do with and to your body. You
are free to honor God with it. But your freedom does not mean, for example, that
you can take your own life. Obviously everyone has the ability to do that, but
doing it offends against everything creation and resurrection means. It is the
same as calling God a liar—saying creation and life are not good and his
promises are not true.
The same with your neighbor. The resurrection gives force to the golden rule: Do
to others as you would have them do to you. Why? Because every person is endowed
with the dignity of God’s image and is the object of God’s love. Jesus died for
that person. Would you mistreat him or her?
The same with the created world. God set us up as caretakers over creation. He
gave us this world to use for our needs and to enjoy. But our selfishness is
spoiling the planet. I confess I know nothing about global warming. Even a slow
learner like me can recognize the damage we are doing to our environment,
however. Everything from rain forests to the oceans. God loves the earth too. It
has dignity and a destiny too. Each of us must look to that as we make lifestyle
choices.
3. The resurrection promises a glorious future in which God redeems everything
good that is lost. This promise frees us to honor God by giving up pleasures in
the present moment. Think of Christian martyrs. They chose death rather than
renounce their faith in Christ. Life is good. Family is good. Many good things
they could have enjoyed had they lived. Yet they were able to honor God because
they knew they could lose nothing that God would not redeem and restore.
This is an important part of our freedom as Christians. We are free, for
example, to marry and raise families. That can be a lot of fun. We are also free
to remain single and devote our lives to a cause, as Mother Teresa did. We are
free to eat and enjoy good food with friends. We are also free to fast for a
time and go off by ourselves for prayer, as Jesus did. We are free to kick back
on the sofa and watch the big game. We are also free to skip it in order to
clean up the church. In so many more ways, we are free both to partake and to
abstain, and both choices can honor God provided we receive his gifts with
thanksgiving and we keep in mind the ministry God has given us to do and our
neighbor’s need. You cannot honor God by always choosing play instead of work.
You cannot honor God by living a garish lifestyle in a world of need. Not every
choice honors God, but at least we are free to do so. We can pour ourselves out
in service to God and others, knowing that the reward that awaits us is far
better than whatever temporary pleasure we give up now.
In conclusion, the resurrection of Jesus frees us to enjoy creation and to honor
God in our use of it. God said creation was good, and he meant it. He even
refused to let sin corrupt it. Jesus died and rose again. So let all creation
rejoice and celebrate, for Christ is alive, and new creation has begun! Amen.