The Death Church

Our reading today is from First Corinthians chapter 15 and then verse 54. And Saint Paul speaking about our bodies, says,

So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. (1 Corinthians 15:54)

There is a church body in this world that has more members than any other church body, and its message is heard all around the world in more ears than any other world religion combined. It has churches everywhere in the world, in the cemeteries and cremation incinerators in county morgues. Its pulpits can be found in hospitals, in coffins, in hearses. It’s sacraments are not water, but formaldehyde, not bread and wine, but cotton and embalming fluids. And its primary theologians are doctors and morticians. It is the death church, and it has one central teaching to proclaim.

You shall surely die.

And everybody has been indoctrinated into the theology of this death church. We listen to its preachers constantly. We read its theology in the obituaries every week, and every time we hear about somebody, a friend of ours who has passed away, we hear that message. And you are born into this faith of the Death Church on your very first birthday, which ironically, we consider a celebration of life.

Sometimes people, as they age, do not like to celebrate their birthdays so much. Why is that? Well, it’s because we know we’re getting closer to the end of our life. And as you celebrate each birthday, you’re actually counting down the years of your life. In a way, our birthdays are like an odometer clicking away toward each of our death days. I remember when I was a little child, the first time I was playing in a ravine, and I ran into the body of a dead raccoon, and I could not believe how horrible and rancid the smell was, and just how awful death seemed, just looking at that dead animal.

And the Bible says that that’s what’s in all of us as members of this death church. But God, the Holy Spirit has come along and he has preached a different message into our hearts. And he has converted us and taken us out of the Death Church into the Life Church. And it’s all been done on account of the work of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, and by the power of his resurrection, those who cling to him by faith and believe in him, and trust that he’s forgiven them all of their sins by his death, they now have the promise that their own death has been swallowed up in his victory. In fact, the Greek word here that Paul uses is devoured. That death has been devoured in the victory of Christ.

People have used the illustration that sometimes a mother bird will try to get a poisonous worm away from her little baby chicks by eating that worm and consuming it. And that’s quite a picture of what our Lord Jesus has done for us. He has taken this vicious thing of death that wants to kill us. This poisonous thing of death. And he himself has consumed it and completely annihilated it, so that you and I don’t have to worry about it. And he says to us,

Because I live, you shall live also. (John 14:19)

You and I have been blessed to be part of the Life Church because of the work of God in our hearts, and may we all look forward to that day when we enter heaven as our eternal birthday. Amen.