Where Is Thy Sting?

Passionate Humble Hands
March 29, 2015
“You Don’t Own Me” – Earth
April 12, 2015

“Where is Thy Sting?”

Listen to the sermon here, or watch it here.

Like many of us, Christians in the early church at Corinth struggled to understand the meaning of what happened on Easter morning.  The Apostle Paul had later seen the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, convincing him that Christ’s life proves death is not the end.  Yet the Corinthians were skeptics who didn’t believe Jesus’ resurrection would necessarily help their bodies.  So Paul wrote to explain that because of Easter morning, neither they nor we need fear the sting of death.  His letter is complex, full of Old and New Testament allusions and interprets the resurrection for us.  In doing so it provides clues about the nature of God’s love when it comes to the mystery of death.  Let’s hear the complex but life-changing words from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.

Let us pray.  Gracious and loving God.  On this day of all days, may we breathe in the power of your Holy Spirit.  Help us live in the joy of Christ’s resurrection.  Amen. 

One Sunday morning last August I preached at a conference center in New York.  The congregation was made up of summer vacationers and many retirees.  It was a nice day so following worship we joined the coffee hour where the refreshments were set up on the grass outside the sanctuary auditorium.

After a few minutes of connecting with folks, we needed to take our daughter Cate up to our room and so Bridget and I began walking her away from the auditorium on the flower filled grass towards the chapel which led directly to our room.  It was summer, I didn’t have a robe and we got about fifty feet from the social hour tables when a bee, a yellow jacket actually, flew up the bottom leg of my trousers! 

I jumped when the yellow jacket first stung my ankle.  Bees often die after one sting, but, as I learned the hard way, yellow jackets often live and keep their stinger.  I jumped again when it stung me on the back of my calf.   Bridget asked me what was wrong.  “I’m being stung!” I cried out.  

A yellow jacket sting feels like a sharp, lingering prick.  (Sort of like the feeling you get from shaving off one’s beard after a few months.)  Bridget said, “I can hear it buzzing.”  I tried unsuccessfully to brush the yellow jacket out.  I jumped again when the insect stung me twice more on the other side of my calf and knee.    

At this point, seeing her life partner in such pain, my wife did the only logical thing she could, she strongly suggested that I immediately remove my pants to let the bee out.  Safety first! 

Now, we were standing between the auditorium and the chapel about 50 feet from where the congregation was milling about drinking coffee and enjoying refreshments on a sunny day.  The thought of my trying to explain why the pastor who had just preached the morning sermon was now standing there in a jacket, tie and no pants was not going to work.  So my wife took our daughter while I ran back to the room, but not before I was stung twice more on the calf along the way. 

Back in the room I was feeling lightheaded.   I sat down, drank water, and took Benadryl.  My mother is quite allergic to bee stings.  She carries medicine to counter any poisonous effects.  She has been hospitalized for bee stings.  So they make me nervous when I get one.  Six in a row?  I thought, “What if I too were now allergic?  I’m at a remote location.  What if I go into shock and need a hospital?   What if this is the end for me?”

There are times when we all have something unexpected happen and we wonder if it’s the end for us.  A slip on some ice.  A near miss on the highway.  A muscle strain that feels too close to our heart.  As time marches on we think about death. That can be scary.

What frightens you most about death?   All surveys don’t speak for everyone of course, but having looked at several surveys of attitudes this week, I see that the most frequently cited fears Americans have about death are 1) the process of dying; 2) missing loved ones left behind and 3) fearing what will happen to us on the other side.

If you think about it, these flow from great loves in the Bible.  In Matthew 22, when Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment is, he said, building on the ideas of the Old Testament, it is to love the Lord our God with all we have and love our neighbor as ourself.  Love yourself, your neighbor and God.  Our great fears of death relate to loss of such loves.  The loss of self, the possible pain that goes with dying.  Loss of relationship with others and worry about what will happen to those we leave behind.  Then what will happen to us on the other side when we meet our maker.

I joined the Seven Locks tennis team last summer and in June tore my gastroc muscle in the same calf which the yellow jacket stung in August so was in pain all summer.  Doctors tell me that most people in most time periods in history have had to live with some chronic pain.  Before modern medicine, an injury or an attack created pain which didn’t easily go away.   So when Paul wrote that God has promised to make our bodies new and Jesus proved it by coming back in renewed bodily form it was life-changing.  We live longer now than back then and so have chronic pain for different reasons.  If we are afraid as we watch our bodies decline, Easter offers hope that the process of death and resurrection will bring freedom from the pain that is life-changing for us too.

Humans understand this mystery at a deep level.  Many studies of attitudes towards death start with the idea that someone in their 90’s might fear death more than someone in their 30’s.  Yet surveys consistently reveal that over the age of 50, people start fearing death less and less.  That is particularly true of people over 80.   Church-goers tend to fear death less still.

The first witnesses to Easter were fearful.  Jesus told them not to be afraid.  For he who had died had risen from the grave.  Paul tells us 500 people saw him.  The early witnesses saw that a mortally wounded body was given new life and staked their very lives amidst persecution on the truth that Jesus, who was dead, now lives.  That the perishable had put on imperishability.  The mortal had put on immortality.  Paul wanted the Corinthians and us to know that even as our bodies hurt as they change over time, Jesus’ Easter witness reveals that the ultimate result of that change will be glory.

Americans age 30 to 50 are the group that worries most about death.  They worry about what their loved ones would do if something happened to them.   Easter celebrates that love originates from God and is present even when we are absent. 

Sue Monk Kidd’s best-selling novel The Secret Life of Bees tells of a girl named Lily who is haunted by her mother’s death.  A friend teaches Lily about the undying love that comes from beyond and that in order to feel the completeness she has been searching for since her mother’s death, Lily must realize that she is loved by a love which is bigger than just one person.  Through her adventures, Lily finds love from her new adopted mothers, from her relationships with the spirit of Mary, and even from the bees. 

It is appropriate that at Easter, someone named Lily helps us remember that love doesn’t just emanate from one person.  When Jesus walked out of the tomb his victory swallowed up death.  In writing of victory swallowing death, Paul quotes the prophet Isaiah (using a metaphor about a creature, death, which swallows us, but who is then, in turn, swallowed by God’s love) who writes that God will swallow up death for all peoples and will wipe away all tears.  It is very inclusive.  When we miss someone’s love or wonder how our children or grandchildren will survive without us, know that love does not leave the world with our natural death.  God’s love for all continues even if we are not there to express it.  God so loved the world that he gave his only son to bring life and love to the world if we are willing to believe.  As our choir sang, love is the lesson the Lord taught. 

In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul is most focused on the fear of what comes after we die.  Paul’s point is that because of Easter, the sting of death has been removed. 

The word for sting which Paul uses here is also used in Revelation 9, during John’s vision where trumpets sound as well and locusts sting like scorpions.  The insects were given the power to enact harm with a sting, but not the power to end physical life through it.  The biblical sting is confined to the living.  The biblical sting of death is something which harms us on this side.  It’s our fear of death. 

Socrates said, “No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings, yet we fear it as if we knew that it is the greatest of evils.” 

There are two great deaths Paul encourages us to consider based on our two bodies.  There is natural death.  No one escapes it, it’s the natural end to human life on earth.  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.  There are tragic deaths that come too soon.  There is mourning by those who are left.  Natural death is a hard thing, but it’s not a corrupt, unnatural or evil.  It is not an enemy.[i]  

Yet Paul writes to the Corinthians, “the last enemy to be destroyed is death.”  What does he mean?  He is talking about a spiritual death, a death to one’s relationship with God.  He means that, as with Adam, all of us make serious mistakes.  Even when we try to do good, we simply miss the mark too often.  I know I do.  When we do we feel separated from God. 

Paul knew what it was like to do wrong from his own persecuting Christians before becoming one.  For bad behavior, Corinth was the Las Vegas of its day.  Paul’s phrase “where is thy victory, where is thy sting,” is adapted from a similar phrase the prophet Hosea used to criticize Israel for separating itself from God through idol worship. 

God’s response to sin in Hosea is to redeem ultimately Israel from death,much as God would “wipe away all tears” as Isaiah puts it.  Both written in the 8th century B.C., they describe the God who saves, a God who swallows death with love.

Easter confirms the compassion of God.  Because of Easter our relationship with God is restored.  Jesus walked out of the tomb showing there is something on the other side of physical death.  People saw him.  The Corinthians believed in the resurrection.  The Holy Spirit testifies to life continuing.  The hopeful similarities of near death experiences, mediums and spiritual literature in our time from those declared dead who come back, give an indication that there is much to look forward to.    

Paul’s question for the Corinthians, and us, is do we, with all our flaws, get to participate in it?  Paul’s answer is yes.  We know this because in his description of the people Jesus visited after his resurrection, the only three Paul lists by name to appear to and have a relationship with are Peter and James and Paul, himself.[ii]  Peter is the one who had just denied Jesus three times in life.  His brother James was part of the part of his family which Mark and John tell us didn’t always believe Jesus and at times tried to restrain him, and Paul persecuted Christians before becoming one.  Unlike the women named Mary, these three had separated themselves from Jesus.  I think Paul singles them out to let us know that no matter what challenges we face and how we separate ourselves from our Lord, God’s grace wins.  Because of Jesus we will have a relationship with God in the life to come.

So if you are here today and worry about life after death, or miss someone who died recently and you wonder about their soul or fear that your mistakes will keep God from loving you, Easter brings good news.  God loves us before we do anything.  God loves us in spite of ourselves.  God loves you and me so much as to give God’s only son.  We are saved simply because of the infinite grace offered to us.

Death does not have final word.  Jesus pays the price, bears the burden and takes our sins and the sting of death on himself.   In Jesus Christ, we are forgiven.  In Christ, death is defeated.   In Christ, the path to God for you and for me has been restored.  In Christ, the final enemy is defeated. 

Why would it be that if we develop a relationship with an infinite God here, that the relationship would end just because our natural life ends?   Could not death be the end to one act of existence and the beginning of another?[iii]  As Peter Pan said, “death will be a great adventure.”  As Gandalf tells Pippin in Lord of the Rings, “Death is just another path, one we must all take.”  Paul, no longer fearing death, later says, “to die is gain.”  So Paul mocks death asking, “O death, where is thy victory, where is thy sting?”  It is gone for him and for us forever. 

On Tuesday night, our family was getting ready for bath time and one of our four-year-olds noticed a good sized spider in the bathtub.  The other children came running to see it.  They had several opinions on what to do with it.  One child said” flush it.”  Another, “wash it down the tub.”  One said we should keep the spider as a pet.  I suggested that child “tell your mom we now want to keep a large spider as a pet.”  Then one of the children said, “Let’s take him outside and set him free.”  Now we were getting somewhere.  That idea was the one which resonated with the others and so the children got a jar, picked up the spider, covered the jar, took him outside and set him free.

No matter how frightened we seem.  No matter how much we worry that we bug God.  No matter how we many times our shortcomings and sins sting us and poison our relationship with the almighty, the message of Easter morning is that, because of Christ’s victory, there is freedom from the fear of decline, separation and death. 

When Jesus walked out of the tomb on Easter morning it changed the world.  It meant that death is not the last word, for our bodies will be transformed.  Regret does not have to define our relationships, for God’s grace abounds.  Separation is not our destiny, for light and glory were not created to make us long for something out of our reach.  God’s love comes close for you and for me.  Love, which swallows death, heals the sting and sets us free.   May it be so.  Amen.


[i] Kyle Fedler’s excellent summary of 1 Corinthians 15: 51-58 in Feasting on the Word, p. 398-402 has been very helpful in this section.

[ii] William Barclay.  1 Corinthians.  New Daily Study Bible.

[iii] Ibid.