Bodies, Resurrection, and the Hope of Easter
April 2025 Devotional
Sexuality Meets Resurrection Hope
“What does the resurrection have to do with my sexuality?”
“Oh, only EVERYTHING.”
It was the answer I heard Calvin University Pastor Mary Hulst offer several years ago at the Calvin Symposium on Worship in Grand Rapids. She was leading a standing-room-only workshop not on sexuality but on another hot topic at the time: “Preaching to and with Millenials” (OK, not as hot, but still interesting enough to pack a room full of eager GenX pastors like me).
Sidebar: Mary is one of the best preachers I know; check her out here.
It was almost Lent, and Pastor Mary was answering a question she often heard from students: Why does Easter even matter? And to put a much finer point on that question, What does Jesus’ resurrection have to do with something that matters a lot to us, like sex?
Well. Hold my grape juice.
One of the most central resurrection texts we have in the New Testament is 1 Corinthians 15. It’s like Paul’s “ICYMI (in case you missed it) before we’re done here” moment: if Christ’s resurrection isn’t for you and if it doesn’t change absolutely everything for us in this life and in the next—then we’re all liars, our ministry is useless, your faith is meaningless, and all we can look forward to is death.
Full stop. It was possibly more inflammatory than anything Paul wrote explicitly about sex.
Jesus died and rose from the dead, not just for your soul but for your body. The resurrection means that our bodies matter now and forever. So, with all the Grace of the Cross covering all the mistakes we’ve all made, what we do and don’t do with our bodies in this life matters for eternity.
If that’s not true, back to 1 Corinthians 15, then “Let us eat and drink,” [read: do whatever we want with our bodies] “for tomorrow we die.”
No. Our bodies matter so much to God that he considers them “temples of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 6). And Easter means that death is not the end of our bodies or the end of our stories. If we truly believe the promise that because of Jesus, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Cor 15:26), then the resurrection has everything to do with our bodies, including every bit of our sexuality.
So happy Easter, my friends!
Thank you for being who you are and doing what you’re doing.
Thank you for your faithfulness and your courage, your honesty, and your hope in a world that does not yet understand us and with a Church that is still learning how to receive us.
Thank you for the brave and beautiful ways you are following Jesus through it all.
Because it all matters forever.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
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