The First Fruits of Easter and Ascension

Scripture: Leviticus 23: 9-14; 1 Corinthians 15: 20-24

Sermon: The First Fruits of Easter and Ascension

Topics: feast, resurrection, first-fruits

Preached June 1, 2014

Rev. Mike Abma

Leviticus 23: 9-14

9 The Lord spoke to Moses: ¹⁰Speak to the people of Israel and say to them: When you enter the land that I am giving you and you reap its harvest, you shall bring the sheaf of the first fruits of your harvest to the priest. ¹¹He shall raise the sheaf before the Lord, so that you may find acceptance; on the day after the sabbath the priest shall raise it.¹²On the day when you raise the sheaf, you shall offer a lamb a year old, without blemish, as a burnt-offering to the Lord. ¹³And the grain-offering with it shall be two-tenths of an ephah of choice flour mixed with oil, an offering by fire of pleasing odour to the Lord; and the drink-offering with it shall be of wine, one-fourth of a hin. ¹⁴You shall eat no bread or parched grain or fresh ears until that very day, until you have brought the offering of your God: it is a statute for ever throughout your generations in all your settlements.

1 Corinthians 15: 20-24

20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. ²¹For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being;²²for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. ²³But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. ²⁴Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power.

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

INTRODUCTION

I had hoped to be able to take some strawberries from our garden – the first ripe ones of this spring — and to eat them right now, right here, demonstrating the goodness and sweetness of first fruits.

But alas, the spring has been a little cold.

Everything is a little late.

And the strawberries in my garden are still green.

But we have had our first rhubarb pie of the season – and it was good, very good.

That word “first fruits” – perhaps it has lost some of its goodness and sweetness in our world of year-round availability.

But the word has a rich Biblical heritage.

First fruits.

On the one hand, it was the general practice year-round, to offer the first fruits of your produce or your flocks as a thank-offering to the Lord.

Lots of sermons, especially Stewardship Sermons, have the theme of giving our first fruits rather than just our leftovers to the Lord.

But this morning I would like to look specifically at the Feast of First fruits described in Leviticus 23.

I would like to look at the Time it was celebrated,

and also the Place it was to be celebrated,

and tie that to both Easter and Ascension.

TIME OF THE FEAST OF FIRST FRUITS

The Feast of First Fruits was the 3^rd Spring Festival of Israel.

There were 3 of them in row.

First, there was the Passover, celebrated on a Friday.

Then there was the Feast of Unleavened Bread, celebrated beginning on the

Sabbath, or Saturday, right after Passover.

And third, on the day after the Sabbath, that would be Sunday,

they celebrated this Feast of First Fruits.

As Leviticus 23 puts it:

On the 14^th day of the month, Passover,

The 15^th day, Unleavened Bread

And the 16^th day the First Fruits.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

On the Sunday, the priest would raise a sheaf of grain,

the first fruits of the spring harvest,

and wave it before the Lord as an offering.

Now let’s jump to the New Testament.

Let’s jump to that majestic chapter on the Resurrection of Jesus, 1 Corinthians 15.

When Paul is looking for a fitting image to describe the risen Christ,

he uses this Old Testament term First Fruits.

But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead,

The first fruits of those who have died (1 Cor 15:20)

The First Fruits.

On Easter morning,

on the day after the Sabbath,

on the day that began the Feast of First Fruits

Jesus rose from the dead,

the first fruits of those who have died.

Paul uses this term intentionally,

because he wants to convey that Christ is the first,

but that there will be a whole huge harvest of those who will come

after him,

a whole huge harvest of those who will also rise from the dead.

Jesus is the first of this harvest —

The first citizen of the new creation;

The first born of the dead;

The first fruit of a brand new redeemed humanity.

Now it was not a priest who raised this first fruit,

but God himself who raised this first fruit from the dead.

This first fruit is so new, Paul calls Jesus the new Adam.

The first Adam was like a rotten apple,

causing the whole boatload of apples, all of us apples,

to be rotten too.

But Jesus, the new Adam,

the first fruit of the new creation

is so holy, so perfect, so righteous,

that he reverses what the first Adam caused.

He makes all of us rotten apples,

into a harvest of holy, perfect fruit.

And it all started the day after the Sabbath,

the first day of the week,

the beginning of the Feast of First Fruits,

Easter Morning.

PLACE OF THE FEAST OF FIRST FRUITS

There is another thing about this feast of First Fruits that I would like you to notice.

Israel did not celebrate it while wandering in the desert.

They could only celebrate it once they had entered the Promised Land,

the land God was giving to them.

The First-fruits, then,

were tied together with their entry into the Promised Land.

In fact, the first-fruits

carried the sense of their acceptance:

their acceptance by the Lord

and their acceptance into the Promised Land.

If the time of the first-fruits reminds us of Easter,

the place reminds us of Christ’s Ascension.

You see, in his ascension,

Christ, the first-fruits of the new creation,

was bringing humanity —

our bodily human flesh —

into heaven for the very first time.

Jesus, the first-fruits of the new humanity,

makes us acceptable to the Father

and makes our entry into heaven acceptable too.

OPENING THE DOORS

I know there is always a danger in using an earthly example to shine a light on a heavenly reality, but ….well….here we go.

In the summer of 2011 our family was in Boston.

We were there to celebrate my niece’s wedding to a hockey player.

There were different hockey players we met for that celebration,

including Milan Lucic, one of the stars of the Boston Bruins hockey team.

Now the Boston Bruins had just won the Stanley Cup,

and Milan was one of the big stars of that victory.

When Milan learned that a bunch of us were hoping to go to Fenway Park

to watch the Boston Red Sox play the Toronto Blue Jays,

he said, “Come early and meet me at the gate.”

We came early,

and suddenly Milan was escorting us through a private entrance to Fenway.

All the doors were open to Milan.

Before we knew it,

we were getting a full guided tour

of the inside, the inner sanctum,

of Fenway Park,

the oldest stadium in Major League Baseball.

At the end of the tour, we walked past the locker rooms,

into the Red Sox dug-out

and out onto the field itself

where the team was warming up.

It was kind of … glorious.

Why am I telling you this story?

Because we never would have got into Fenway Park without Milan.

And the doors of Fenway would not have opened for Milan,

had he not won the Stanley Cup.

In a similar way,

Christ, our first-fruits,

opens the doors to heaven for us,

to the inner sanctum of the presence of his Father.

He opens the way to the Promised Land.

There is no way we can get there without him.

And the doors would have remained shut for us,

had Christ not won the victory over sin and death and the devil,

had he not removed these obstacles in our way.

That is the glorious beauty of the Ascension.

Because Jesus is bone of our bone

and flesh of our flesh,

when he ascended into heaven,

He did so in our name,

He did so with our flesh

He did so on our behalf.

He paved the way,

by making us acceptable,

and not only acceptable,

but cherished, and loved, and honored

so that the crown, the glory, the joy

of heaven itself is available to us.

That is why Easter and the Ascension are such Big Feasts for us.

Easter – Christ, the first fruits of the dead,

the first fruits of the huge harvest of his redeemed humanity

that will on the last Day also be raised from the dead.

And then the Ascension — Christ, the first-fruits,

paving the way for us to the Promised Land,

preparing a place for us in the Promised Land.

CONCLUSION

We had a hard winter this year.

It felt like we were wandering out in the wilderness of cold and snow and ice

for 40 weeks in 40 below temperatures.

Have we ever longed so much for spring?

But that longing has made

everything this spring taste so much better:

the first snow peas so much tastier,

the first rhubarb pie so much sweeter.

We take these in our hands

and we eat them with thanks.

We eat them with hope.

We eat them with the promise of so much more to come.

Today

We gather, young and old

around this table.

We will take the bread.

We will take the cup.

These are first-fruits in their own right.

For they are signs

that we belong to Christ and he belongs to us.

They are signs

Signs that what Christ is – risen and glorified –

is what we shall be.

Signs that where Christ is – in the presence of the Father —

is where we shall be.

Here are the bread and the cup,

Signs of Christ, our first-fruits,

reminding us that

our earthly presence is there in heaven with Christ.

reminding us that

his heavenly presence is here on earth with us.

But this separation is only for a while,

only until that final harvest day,

only until heaven comes to earth

and all things are made new.

Until then, as we wander,

We take,

We touch,

We taste,

We savor

the first-fruits of the Promised Land.

AMEN