All Our Bodies
1 Corinthians 15:35-50
But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’ Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. Not all flesh is alike, but there is one flesh for human beings, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; indeed, star differs from star in glory.
So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living being’; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.
What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
At the risk of presenting myself as a very unqualified lecturer, I feel like I have to start this sermon out with some explanations about translation. Throughout this whole section, Paul is trying to kind of do away with this binary concept of body vs. soul—he’s trying to convince the skeptical and cultured people of Corinth that literal dead bodies will indeed rise when these end times come. And so when the most scholarly translation of the Bible—the one that we generally read from and accept—translates the word “physical” from the Greek, it has the potential of ruining Paul’s entire argument. “If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.” And then, in verse 50, “…flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God…” But… isn’t this a contradiction? It certainly seems, from an initial reading, that Paul went from saying, that yes, corpses will be reanimated in these end times, we must believe in literal resurrection, to explaining that there is a difference between a physical body and otherwise and our physical bodies won’t inherit the kingdom of God.
But what Paul is actually saying here is this—that our current mortal bodies—these are the bodies that hold our soul. Physical could be more literally translated to “soul-like.” Paul is at once appealing to the Corinthians belief in the soul while at the same time totally turning their belief in the soul upside down. Paul is making it clear that there is a difference between soul and spirit—or, at least, maybe he was making it clear to the Corinthians, but he’s not making it very clear to speakers of modern-day English. And he’s trying to say that what will come after death when these final end-times come, when Jesus returns, is less a life after death, and rather a complete transformation.
Last week, I talked about how strangely, this idea of our bodies being reanimated after death is both more difficult and initially kind of grotesque, but, at the same time, easier to grasp. Because it’s talk about our bodies that we know, the bodies that we can comprehend; rather than some kind of transparent ghostly, other-worldly thing. I was thinking about this even more this week, thanks to Paul’s comparing of different types of bodies—human, bird, fish; heavenly bodies and earthly bodies—and contrasting between our physical, soul-having bodies and what the future holds for us in our transformed, spirit-having bodies. It got me thinking about how much this actually does make sense. It got me thinking about how in our relatively short lifetimes, our bodies change and transform, sometimes naturally, sometimes not. And most often, they transform because of forces out of our control.
There’s an absolutely beautiful book I read last year—it’s a semi-autobiographical novel by the Bosnian poet Semezdin Mehmedinovic, it’s called My Heart. It’s sort of divided in three different sections, and the final section is the main character’s experiences in the immediate aftermath of his wife having a stroke. There’s a beautiful and intimate moment in which his wife asks him to bathe her in the hospital. In describing the bath, he says, “Her body is familiar territory for me, it has altered with time, and I remember it in various phases. I remember all her bodies.”[i] All her bodies. And I immediately thought of this book when I read this passage this week. Because I realized, not only are there different types of bodies all over—non-human mammal, bird, fish, reptile, amphibian—we humans go through different bodies throughout time. Most of the time we’re unaware of these transformations, they just happen as our life goes on. But there are other moments in which we are acutely aware of these transformations—sometimes in beautiful, life-giving ways, sometimes in wrenching and life-altering ways.
After Jesus was resurrected, when he appeared to his disciples, he still had the marks of the nails in his hands and stomach. He retained the scars of this world though he, at this point, was of another world. And so I wonder, what marks from this world will we be left with when Jesus returns?
When I was in my chaplaincy residency in Philadelphia, there was a young man who came onto my unit. He was 19-years-old and he had been hit by a car. His left leg had to be amputated. I remember my visits with him well. In those first days after the accident, he was quiet, tearful. Sometimes he was express his fear and anger about this transformed body he was given, about his new life as an amputee. Sometimes he would sit and silently cry and simply accept my presence. This was a young man whose body was transformed in a way he never could have predicted. In that moment, his old self was no more, and his new self was trying to comprehend what this new life would look like.
But I’m also thinking of smaller, joyful transformations. A family friend from my church in Salem, a couple decades ago, was diagnosed with breast cancer. She went thought chemo and lost her hair. She has now been successfully in remission since then, but when her hair grew back, it grew back curly, a completely new and transformed from the straight hair she had before her life-saving treatment. Her curly hair is now both a powerful reminder of making it through cancer; but it’s also a reminder of the trauma she went through—a reminder that she is now a different person than she was before her diagnosis and treatment.
Our bodies are transformed throughout life in so many ways—we lose our first set of teeth and get a whole new set; we go through puberty; we have growth spurts; we develop gray hairs and wrinkles; we gain weight, we lose weight. We fall and get temporary bruises, or sometimes permanent scars. We get into car accidents, we roll our ankles on hikes, we pull muscles running. We are abused, we are yelled yet, we are frightened. We’re lifted up, we are hugged and we are validated. And we hold onto so many feelings that come from these instances, both good and bad, and we are therefore transformed, for better and for worse.
As you know church, I have gone through a trauma these past two-plus months. My body is changed from having to lose my baby. It has made me into a different person. I am not the same person I was before getting pregnant. And I am certainly not the same person I was before losing my baby at nearly 22 weeks. There are physical reminders of this loss that I see daily. My physical body was transformed by this and I don’t have a living baby to show for it. Those physical reminders are gut-wrenching. They hurt my heart and they hurt my soul. And so I look forward to the day when our soul-like bodies will be no more. I look forward to the day when our soul-like history is not erased, but we are gifted with the same life-giving spirit that Jesus has. I look forward to the day when somehow our scars remain, what makes us who we are remains, but the pain and the trauma does not.
But we have not come to that glorious pain-free era. But thus far, I have been able to make it through this traumatic and devastating time thanks to the love and understanding of my family, my friends, and this community. I can safely say that you are all much of the reason I have been able to make it through this time that has been the most difficult of my life.
In his wildly popular book The Body Keeps the Score, a book all about what trauma does to the mind and body, Bessel van der Kolk writes, “Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives.” He goes on to say, “Social support is not the same as merely being in the presence of others. The critical issue is reciprocity: bring truly heard and seen by the people around us, feeling that we are held in someone else’s mind and heart.”[ii] When we are truly seen and heard, we feel safe. When we feel safe, we are at ease, and we can have a comfortable and fulfilling life. And I can tell you, despite everything I’ve gone through in these past two months, I have felt safe and loved.
But van der Kolk also makes it clear—there’s a fine line to walk here. He writes of how traumatized people often ally themselves in groups of those with similar experiences—this can be comforting and healthy, but only to an extent. He writes,
Isolating oneself into a narrowly defined victim group promotes a view of others as irrelevant at best and dangerous at worst, which eventually only leads to further alienation. Gangs, extremist political parties, and religious cults may provide solace, but they rarely foster the flexibility needed to be fully open to what life has to offer…[iii]
If that quote doesn’t describe the violently divided and partisan state of this country right now, I don’t know what does.
And this is what Paul was warning against a few weeks ago—he was warning against certain people with certain skills lifting themselves above others, creating an oppressive hierarchy, when what we must really be doing is working together as one body, for the good of all bodies.
Our bodies have all gone through various traumas—surgeries, births, getting poked and prodded; even the most fortunate among us have gone through life-changing transitions, because it is simply a part of life. And so we should all have empathy for those who suffer. We should all want to create a world where no one has to suffer, where no one is denied healthcare or shelter or comfort. But we live in a world where the suffering are not seen or heard, and are therefore subjected to trauma after trauma. If I had to go through my loss without this community, without my loved ones, I don’t know what I would have done. And so I want to work for a world where everyone can have those social supports.
I believe that once we create a world in which everyone is well-looked after and provided for, that is when God’s will is done. And that is when this transformation will happen. That’s when these soul-like bodies we have, these fragile bodies that experience pain and decay; these delicate minds that experience grief and fear—they will be no more. It won’t be a life after death, it will be an earth as it is in heaven. It will truly be a transformation.
Think about the way our bodies change and adapt and transform throughout this difficult and delicate life. Think about the many phases, our many different bodies. All our bodies. Think about the different people we become with each change, with each injury, with each surgery. And then imagine all our bodies with no pain, with no suffering. No worries about shelter or money. No more trauma, no more tragedy. These bodies we have now won’t be erased of their scars or their supposed imperfections, but pain that once came with them will be gone. The trauma and the flashbacks and the grief will be gone.
I believe that is what Paul is saying throughout all this, in his sometimes self-righteous, maybe a little over-zealous way. We must believe in this bodily resurrection, because that is where the real hope is. But Paul—and this is kind of out of character for him—leaves some room for ambiguity. This metaphor of the seed he uses here—if someone places a tiny seed in our hand, very few, if any of us, could predict what that seed will turn into. And so it’s clear—we don’t really know what this transformation will look like, and we certainly don’t know when it will come. We can look to Jesus and his transformation as some sort of clue of what we will be like when we all of that life-giving spirit within. But we won’t be gifted that life-giving spirit until we work for a society that lifts up all the bodies in this world. It’s hard to feel motivated to keep up our work when it seems like there is just so much pain in this world. It’s so easy to wonder, what’s the point, when it seems like our work is futile when those in power who should be working to take care of us don’t seem to be seeing or hearing us. But think about all your own physical, all your soul-like transformations that your body experiences in this world. Think about the live-giving ones and the traumatic ones. And think about a world in which no one has to experience those traumatic ones again; where everyone will have that life-giving spirit flowing through them.
I want to end this sermon with a verse from 1 Corinthians that the lectionary leaves out—the final verse of chapter 15, verse 58: “Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” Amen.
[i] Semezdin Mehmedinovic, My Heart (New York: Catapult, 2021), 148
[ii] Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and the Body in the Healing of Trauma (New York, New York: Penguin Books, 2014), 81.
[iii] Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and the Body in the Healing of Trauma (New York, New York: Penguin Books, 2014), 81-82.
