“Jesus Brings a Whole New Creation”
By Rev. Dr. Jason Byassee
Easter Sunday, April 29, 2025
Reading: 1 Corinthians 15:12-26
My favourite Bible scholar tells this joke on himself as an Anglican bishop: how come everywhere St. Paul went there was a riot, but everywhere I go they serve tea?
My job this morning is to show why the passage you just heard should incite a riot. And, to show that all things will soon be made new.
It’s easy enough to believe that there might be life after death. Most human beings for most of history have thought that our soul continues in some sort of afterlife. In fact, most Christians think that’s all Christianity believes: if you believe in Jesus, your soul goes to heaven when you die. We believe that, sure, but we also believe much, much more.
There have always been others for whom this world is ruined and there is no hope for it. The best we can do is head for new worlds, hallucinogen-induced or Star Trek-style, and start over. That’s the stuff of video games and Hollywood thrillers and every third Canadian storefront. It’s frightening that people in power think this way.
Here’s the riotous truth: Yes, our world is badly wounded. But God makes it, loves it, and is remaking it. God will raise everything from death, not just Jesus. In fact, God will remake every particle that God bothered to create in the first place. What happens to Jesus on Easter is the beginning, but not the end of resurrection. One day everything will be raised.
Anybody feel like rioting yet? The ushers have Molotov cocktails to pass out.
In Christian faith we’re allowed to err on the side of believing too much. The danger, I think, is trimming our faith to something understandable, easily believable, digestible. When folks doubt the resurrection our ancestors in faith always say the same thing: well, who created you in the first place? God. So, isn’t it easier for God to remake you than make you in the first place? Yeah, well God has already done the hard part—make you in the first place. What’s to stop God from remaking you? If you can believe God creates all this world, you can believe a lot. If you can believe the resurrection has started, on Easter, you can also believe a lot.
Christians believe that in the resurrection of Jesus, God has begun remaking everything. God has emptied the first tomb. All the other tombs are now primed to be emptied too. Now, how are we to live as people for whom the resurrection is more certain than our next breath?
With the weather warming up I cycled through Mt Pleasant cemetery last week. There’s a kind of democracy of the dead. People who wanted their names remembered as they fashioned grand memorials simply... aren’t remembered at all. Wow, that one’s big. You recognize that name? Nope. Wise people suggest that we all spend more time with the dead. It puts this life in perspective. Small things disappear, large things become small things. Paul is saying that there is not just a democracy of the dead. There’s a democracy of life now, too. Christ repairs everything Adam ruins. Anyone here not descended from Adam? No? Well then, we’ll all be affected by Christ’s resurrection. “As all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.” We will not all be forgotten, contrary to the impression on my bike ride. We will all be remembered by the God who made us in the first place and promises on Easter to remake us one day soon.
Look again at the metaphors: Christ is the first fruits of resurrection. Imagine you’re a farmer. The first of a new harvest arrives. You haven’t tasted say, grapes since this time last year. The first ones will taste so good! But no. Scripture tells us to take those to the temple as an offering. “The choicest of the first fruits of your ground you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God.” You didn’t make those crops come up, that vine give life, that rain fall, God did. Don’t worry, more grapes are coming, so many more you’ll be sick of them. Christ is the first fruits of resurrection. But there is so much more coming. A similar metaphor Paul uses elsewhere is a down payment. Now this is in our wheelhouse, Toronto. Christ’s resurrection is the down payment for the rest of ours. As surely as his resurrection has happened, ours too will come one day. Resurrection begins with Jesus but doesn’t end until it reaches absolutely everybody.
If you believe this, really believe it, you won’t just riot, you’ll live in fantastically hopeful ways. Friends of mine run an ecological ministry called A Rocha in BC. They take care of the Little Campbell watershed, a tiny creek really. They got on environmentalists’ maps by discovering a fish thought extinct in that watershed — a Salish Sucker. So now they get grants to help them do their ecological ministry and they have cameras pointed at the Little Campbell day and night. It was salmon season, so I asked, “how many fish so far?”
“Four.”
“That’s all?”
“Oh, don’t you worry. Thousands more are coming. So many more we can’t count ‘em all. An avalanche of fishes. Four is just the first fruits, the down payment: a sign that all the fish are coming.”
If you’re an Easter person, not just today but every day, hope is never lost. God is birthing a new world, and what’s lost will be nothing compared to what will be found.
Margaret Atwood, grande dame of Canadian letters, found A Rocha and sort of became their unofficial patron. She said ‘I write about end of the world ecological, evangelical sects, and here’s a real-life end of the world evangelical ecological sect.’ Ms. Atwood grew up in the United Church, doesn’t much believe now. But she says the world needs these sorts of communities, fired by the resurrection, who keep watch over creation.
Have a look at the image on your bulletin cover from Piero della Francesca in the 15th century. Christ is striding out of the tomb with a banner of victory. (I know it looks like England’s flag, St. George’s banner, but it’s just a generic cross, trust me, this was painted in Italy). The guards sleep like the dead. In fact, one of the guards is the artist, sleeping while Christ rises. Here’s what interests me most: the landscape behind Jesus. To his right our left it’s barren, a wasteland, a winterscape of death. To his left, our right, it's in full bloom, spring, the land rising to new life. Jesus’ resurrection is the beginning but not the end of Easter. It concludes with all nature raised to the life God intends. This world is not discarded for another. It is not without hope. It is remade from the inside, from the tomb out. Plus, as a bonus—look how ripped Jesus is! Do we all get abs like that in the resurrection?
You might be surprised that image is not in a church or museum in Italy. It’s in a city hall in Sansepolcro. Christ’s resurrection shows he is Lord over all powers. “Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power.” If you thought resurrection was a religious belief in the head, think again. It’s a political claim. The regime of death is over. The reign of life is begun.
I don’t remember a more politically anxious time in Canada than right now, do you? Paul is not surprised. This is the age of death. The age of resurrection life is here too and coming in full. The two ages overlap for now. One day soon, all there will be is new creation. Now, city fathers in Italy, in Toronto, govern accordingly.
You and I have been taught to think of faith as a private decision. Like any other market choice, it’s about me and my wants and needs. Faith is no more important than whether you prefer Wendy’s or A&W. But in our passage, there’s little about individual desire. Christ is the first fruits of all the dead. Whether we believe it or not. Death comes through one man, so life comes through one man. Whether we believe it or not. All die in Adam, our first parent. All will be made alive in Christ. Whether we believe it or not. One day, Christ will destroy every ruler, authority and power, especially death, whether we believe it or not. All of this is cosmic, vast in scope, beyond our imagining. And it’s not undone by our little bitty unbelief.
Now Paul does have a minor place for belief. He hears some of his beloved Corinthians don’t believe in the resurrection of the dead. Maybe they think souls rise, not bodies, who knows. But there must be a resurrection of the body, Paul argues. If not, our preaching falls apart. If not, your faith is in vain. If not, we’ve been lying. If Christ is not raised, we’re all still in our sins. And if Christ is not raised, those who’ve died are truly lost. If we hope only for the sake of this present life, Paul argues, we’re most to be pitied.
But Christ is raised—hope bigger.
I’m convinced that we’ve left faith far too small. As a source of individual hope and comfort. For Paul faith means one grave is empty, but soon that’ll radiate out to every other grave until God has raised all things, a whole new creation. Bodies are there for raising. Every single person you ever see is going to be resurrected one day.
Well, here’s a poem by John Updike. Forgive me if you heard me use this one last year. I’ve just not found any to say it better.
Make no mistake: if he rose at all
It was as His body;
If the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit,
The amino acids rekindle,
The Church will fall.
It was not as the flowers,
Each soft spring recurrent;
It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the Eleven apostles;
It was as His flesh; ours.
The same hinged thumbs and toes
The same valved heart
That—pierced—died, withered, paused, and then regathered
Out of enduring Might
New strength to enclose.
Once resurrection is loose, once it’s out of the tomb on the hunt for us, it shows up everywhere. In those recovering from cancer. In those returned from the grave of addiction. In the free air you breathe getting out of debt. In the open country of friendship. A buddy of mine lost a finger in an accident. Bad day. He says, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get it back in the resurrection.’
It’s probably not ideal to reference a movie nobody else has seen, but none of us watches the same things. There was a little science fiction film called Another Earth in which an alcoholic falls asleep at the wheel, crosses the centre line, and hits an oncoming car, kills everyone inside. Such horrors haunt our world. But now the sci-fi part. Telescope gazers see a familiar world out there. Then it comes closer, visible to the naked eye. And we realize it’s the same Earth as ours. So, she starts to wonder—in this other Earth, am I not a murderer? Did I not lose control of the car and annihilate a family? Imagine the grace of such a world. The filmmakers see farther than they realize. Resurrection is a whole new world without the worst we’ve done, with only the best of us. At Easter that new world begins. It will not rest until it has devoured the old age of death.
A friend of mine once had her life upended in the sort of meteor from the sky disaster we all dread. The sort of thing that’s career-ruining, pariah-making. One minute she had her normal life. The next there was an earthquake and all was lost. Easter is what allowed me to say this with no equivocation — this is not the end. A new world is coming where all is well. In fact, it’s already here. God will bring life out of this tomb. That’s all God does. In fact, it’s all God can do. The God of Easter is not just the God of eternal life. Not just the God of second chances. But also the God who only works resurrection. Happy Easter y’all. Amen.