Life at the Edge

Texts:

Psalm 33:12-22

Job 37:1-13

1 Corinthians 15:50-57

I love the 1 Corinthians reading for today:
50 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. ⁵¹Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die,^* but we will all be changed, ⁵²in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. ⁵³For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality.⁵⁴When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:
‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’ 
⁵⁵ ‘Where, O death, is your victory?
   Where, O death, is your sting?’ 
⁵⁶The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. ⁵⁷But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.


And no, I do not love it because I think it points to the rapture.  And no, I do not love it because it is fascinating literature (though it is!).  I love this because what I think Paul is actually conveying is: "Whatever you have thought about life, whatever you have thought about death, whatever you have thought about eternity, it's better than that."  There is this mystery and there is this promise that, though we cannot see it, though death seems to be the one thing living things cannot avoid, though it often comes during times of great stress and pain, it holds the promise that "Death has been swallowed up."  Death brings questions that yield no easy answers, but it also brings promises beyond our greatest imagination.  


This reading does not empower us to leave life behind, but rather to live into it more fully, more fearlessly, more boldly.  We are not called to be apart from the world but called more deeply into it.  We live at the edge: at the edge of life and death, at the edge of hope and despair, at the edge of belief and apostasy, at the edge of sinner and saint.  It is living on this edge that we find that life is more than preservation, more than protection, more than cautiously walking through hoping we do not encounter any landmines.  It is here we find that life happens in spite of the landmines, in the face of disaster, in the mud and the muck of humanity because it is here Christ dwells.