Mk 10.41-45, 1 Cor 15.1-4.12-26, Col 1.15-20

Preached Canberra Baptist Church 2^nd August 2009

We have been reflecting upon first fruits living. We’ve been exploring the biblical ideas about offering and looking at how that applies to various aspects of our lives. We have looked at the biblical of the idea of offering particularly the first fruits of the harvest and the offering for the first born. In recent weeks we've looked at how this applies to our understanding of debt and to our management of money. In weeks to come we will explore what it says about work and vocation and how it helps us to engage with and better manage the wonderful gift of time.

But today I want to talk about offering and death! At first hearing that might sound quite shocking. We tend to think of offering as something that is tied up with joy, with the fruits of the harvest, with the abundance of life and all of its goods things. How can offering to have anything to do with the bitter and difficult reality of death? Most of us prefer not to think of death. We would rather dwell on happier subjects. Yet death is intrinsically a part of life. Shakespeare reminded us that "all that live must die". In a more colloquial vein, proverbial wisdom affirms the only things you can be sure of in life are death and taxes.

Offering and death. The offering of death? But this is precisely what Paul says in one Corinthians 15.20: But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. A little further on he repeats the metaphor as he talks about the dynamics of resurrection and how it will unfold in human history: But each [is raised] in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. 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. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. (1 Cor 15.23-26)

What on earth is Paul talking about? To understand what he saying more fully we must revisit what we have learned of the first fruits offering, and its development or evolution into the offering for the first born, for any male child or animal that (to use the evocative Scriptural phrase) ‘opens the womb’. You will recall that the first fruits was offered to God because it was his – not because the person making the offering has an abundance of his or her own they want to share – but because this first part of the harvest actually belongs to God! It is God’s property and he jealously claims it.

When a first-born male child or animal arrives he too is God’s property. The idea behind the offering is that this child or animal has somehow ‘pioneered’ or ‘opened up’ the potential of the womb and this is seen as God’s work, God’s miracle, and the animal or person belongs to God.

You can see the association of God’s miraculous power of life and the ownership of the instrument of that power of life. We must acknowledge that it is a very sexist view of God’s way of working – that it is only MALE children or animals that work in this way. This sexist preference for males is an alien world view to us and we recognise it as an element of the ancient cultural context. We want to look beyond the issue of gender to recognize that this ‘opening up’ or ‘pioneering work’ is an expression of God’s goodness and power. Whenever childlessness becomes parenthood, whenever potentiality becomes personhood, whenever flocks and fields yield their increase, God is at work! The offering of the first fruits express that joyful affirmation.

The offering for the first born, who all belong to God, was a sign or acknowledgement of God’s ownership. The offering redeemed those who belonged to God, both animals and human beings, so that they might belong to, and participate in, the human community. The offering for the first born was the price that was paid to restore them to the human family.

In the readings we have heard today, these concepts of the pioneering one who opens new possibilities, of the bringing back into the human community of those who have been ransomed or redeemed, and of the joyful acknowledgement of God’s great power in the harvest are powerfully present.

One Corinthians 15 describes Christ as the first fruits of those who have died.

Colossians 1 describes Jesus as the firstborn of all creation (Col 1.15) and the firstborn from the dead (Col 1.18).

What is dazzling and audacious in this use of the language of offering is that it is applied to the grim harvest of death! Even here, says this language, a new possibility is being opened up. Even in the apparently ultimate darkness and nothingness of death, God is reaping a harvest of newness, of creative potentiality, pioneering new categories of being and possibility.

It is called Resurrection. Far from being something that only happened on a hill far away, on a day long ago, the Resurrection of Christ is the first fruits of a great harvest. Jesus Christ was raised, but raised as the first born from the dead. Colossians goes so far as to say he is the firstborn of all creation and he is the firstborn from the dead, perhaps hinting that all creation will one day participate in this power we call Resurrection.

Now what that means, what shape Resurrection takes in our lives day by day and what shape it gives to our ultimate hope, our final destiny, is not a simple thing to state. It is not life as we know it endlessly extended. It is not some kind of glib assurance that life with its pains and death with its puzzles will pass us by.

It does affirm that death is not just a grim harvest of destruction, but a realm of renewal and hope and even glory. It does affirm that even in this most difficult of human experiences God has not only pioneered a way, but has ransomed, redeemed, all those who follow, that God’s abundant goodness is not just something for this life only, that his love holds us in life AND in death. It affirms that the power and beauty of God’s grace is at work not only in the buds and blossom of spring, or the rich and full harvest of summer, but in the dying glory of autumn and the cold, spare, austerity of winter. The first fruits of God’s grace come to us all year round, and all life long!

Someone said to me this week about this series that there’s been an awful lot about money. That would be a sad and sorry state of affairs if it were so! Biblical teaching on offering is about life, about how to live it richly and fully at every stage. Life is not a matter of work but of wonder, it’s not about ‘hard graft’ but ‘holy gift’, and that quality of gift, of receiving, is shot through all of life, even its ending.

In his novel Godric, Frederick Buechner explores the life of a very flawed and sinful saint in all its failure and its fullness. Godric was a real person and a real saint. He lived in the north of England and left us all a great gift: he is considered the first known lyric poet in the English language. In the book, as the years go by, Godric outlives all the people he has known: his friends Roger and Aelred, his sister Burcwen, his pet snakes, Tune and Fairweather. One day not long before he dies, when he is 105 years old, he bathes in the icy waters of the river Wear to chasten his flesh as he has done winter and summer for years. As his limbs go numb and his pulse slows he hears from deep within his body a prayer rising up:

In youth and childhood his blessings shine – Praise! Praise!! Praise God, all you in the first fine careless rapture of spring.

In the high summer of our days, when we are at our most productive and the crop is rich and the barn is full – Praise! Praise!! Praise God, all you in the broad, productive plain of life’s middle years.

In the autumn splendour of golden leaves, and silver hair, when things fall away in a blaze of glory and the sap slows in the tree –Praise! Praise!! Praise God, all you, ripe and full of years, for whom the harvest of life has come with its fruits of patience and wisdom and grace.