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In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

            Maybe you’ve heard this before, or seen it posted somewhere: “If Jesus is not risen from the dead, then nothing else matters. If Jesus is risen from the dead, then nothing else matters.” [Jaroslav Pelikan is the author, I believe.] Every time I see it, I want to say, “yes,” or share it, or something, but there’s something that strikes me as not quite right about that. And this is probably true for every short, pithy saying. Brief, memorable, quotable things seem to be more believable. Brevity is the soul of wit, someone said. People especially seem to like it when people say something like this: “you though it was like that; but it’s not like that, it’s like this.” Be careful especially with either-or truths. It makes sense in our world, where everything is either this or that, but that is rarely how the world, or the scriptures, or theology works. There are some non-negotiables in Christianity, which people love to try renegotiating, but there’s a lot that is not black-and-white.

            So is it true that if Jesus is not risen from the dead, then nothing else matters? We sort of naturally recoil at things like that, if we think about it. You’re saying that if Christianity is not true, then my work, my family, the world, do not matter? Well, in a sense, yes. And the main reason is death. If you dig down past your initial caring about people and things, and you start asking the big questions about life, like what’s the point? What does it all, or any of it, mean? Why am I doing all these things that I don’t want to do anyway? For that matter, why, ultimately, am I doing things I do enjoy? Ecclesiastes puts it starkly: everyone dies. Rich, poor, successful, unsuccessful, well-liked or hated. Everyone dies, no matter what they’ve accomplished and the vast majority of people are forgotten after a couple generations.

            Some people ask those questions and do not believe that there is anything after death, and they despair, and they say, none of this really matters, and I’m going to stop doing all of it, including life itself. But most of us do not do that. Most of us live in a state of “normal nihilism.” Nihilism is the sense that “why” has no answer, that nobody has a story that makes sense of the world, and so life in the world doesn’t really mean anything. So do what you can, or what you will. But nihilism is the “normal” state of things in the world. Most people have lost a sense of meaning or purpose. But most of us life as if there was meaning in all this. We don’t go all the way to the end of nihilism, which is often insanity or suicide. We keep doing the things we “should,” or “have to,” even though we know it doesn’t really mean anything in the long run. You live once, so do what you can, or what you will, before you die.

            And most of us think it’s good to try to treat other people well, or at least be outwardly nice. We can agree with something like “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” But usually we modify that into “do unto others as you would like them to do unto you, unless they treat you badly, then do unto them as they have done unto you.” That’s not quite the same thing. But, you know, morality, or ethics, or something.

            The fact is, even if there is some purpose to being a generally good person, or at least having people think you’re a good person, that does not add up to a goal that gives meaning to your life. Unless we have an ultimate goal or end at which we’re aiming, then there’s nothing holding together all the other things we do. We might think they’re good things to do, but if we have nothing ultimate to aim at, there is literally no meaning in all the things we work at and do. It’s just one thing after another. If Jesus is not risen from the dead, which entails your resurrection, then nothing else ultimately matters. Paul says it theologically in 1 Corinthians 15: If Christ is not risen from the dead, then all those who have died are just dead. And you’re still in your sins, which means Jesus’ life did not change a single thing. Paul says, If Jesus is not risen from the dead, then our preaching is empty, and your faith is empty. Maybe that accounts for the emptiness of a lot of so-called Christian preaching these days.

            What about the other side? If Jesus is risen from the dead, then nothing else matters. Is that true? There is some truth in it, as there is in every cliché or bumper sticker. Paul tells us the sense in which nothing else matters. He writes to the Philippians about all the boasting that someone might do about status, genealogy, and pedigree. And he says that he could have boasted more: he is a Hebrew of Hebrews, circumcised on the eighth day, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee of Pharisees. In terms of righteousness under the law, blameless. In terms of zeal, persecuting the Church. But then Jesus knocked him off his horse, or at least off his feet, and everything was turned upside-down. That encounter with the risen Jesus put everything in a different, blinding light. Everything Paul thought was important, significant, necessary, suddenly looked like worthless scraps of nothing. He considered it all loss, all garbage, all refuse, all like something that goes into the toilet and then out into the sewer. All of it, he counted as loss for the sake of the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ as his Lord. Even if he still had it, he counted it as lost in order to gain Christ and be found in Him. His blamelessness under the law was not enough anymore. Now he needed a righteousness that did not come from his uncertain and shaky faithfulness under the law; he needed a righteousness that depended on the faithfulness of Jesus, God’s righteousness, given to faith. Now all that matters is that, by any means possible, Paul might attain to the resurrection from the dead. Become like Jesus in His sufferings, be remade in Jesus’ likeness in His death, resurrection is the goal. He hasn’t gotten it yet, or been perfected or completed. But he keeps pressing on toward resurrection; he is constantly forgetting and counting the past things as loss, and pressing on toward what lies ahead, for the sake of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. In that sense, because of the resurrection of Jesus, nothing that mattered before matters in the same way.

But does nothing matter at all? We might think it does, and then we’re just here, doing what we can or what we will, waiting until we die and go to heaven. But we don’t end the Creeds by saying that we believe we will die and go to heaven. It says, “I believe in the resurrection of the body, or of the dead, and the life everlasting, or the life of the world to come.” That’s the goal, the end, of human existence. That’s what it’s all about: restoring us to full human existence, without sin and death and all their effects and symptoms. That’s what resurrection means.  

            But are we just waiting around here for that? Does everything here really mean nothing? Why are we still here, then? Why doesn’t Jesus just disappear us to heaven after we believe in Him? What is all this about? So we’re back in the same place as all the rest of the normal nihilists. But we might ask, then, why Jesus appeared in this world, in a body, and was raised in that body after death? Why did Jesus do all the things He did? Sometimes we think that Jesus was just a nice guy, healing and helping people who asked Him. So the goal is to do the same things Jesus did. The problem is, if that was the goal, if Jesus did those things as ends in themselves, then He did a bad job. Because He only healed a few people, raised a few people, cast out a few demons. He fed 5,000 and then 4,000, but there were a lot more hungry people. Then and now. A lot of people are sick. A lot of people have died. If Jesus appeared only to do the few miracles He did, then He wasn’t very good at it.

            But maybe those things He did weren’t ends in themselves. In fact, John repeatedly calls them “signs.” Because they are means to some other end, pointing outside of themselves. Jesus does them all because they point to a day when there is no sickness and no death, no demons or devil, no lack for anyone. If they were the goal, then He was definitely a failure. If they were signs of what was to come, if they were hints and rumors of a coming day, then we believe that the resurrection of Jesus completes the fullness of the promise contained in those signs.

            Then all this definitely matters, because it mattered enough for God to make it, for the Son to enter it in flesh and blood, and for Him to promise that the resurrection would make good in sight what we only have by faith. So we take care of our little parts of this creation, and we take care of our own bodies and other people in their bodies and souls. We practice what will be perfect in the new creation, perfect love of God and of one another. We think everything matters, but everything matters much more than we think. So we might revise the second part: Jesus is risen from the dead, so everything matters.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7, ESV). Amen.

— Pr. Timothy Winterstein, 10/2/26