Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 6, 2022 – Isaiah 6:1-2A, 3-8; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11

Have you ever tried to build a house of cards? You know what happens, right? Bump the table slightly, or a breeze comes along, a bottom card falls, everything collapses. Today, in the second reading, St. Paul builds us a house of cards. He deals us four cards. Two of them are fact cards. Two of them are interpretation cards.

The first fact card is this – He was seen. That’s why I had us read the long version of the second reading this morning, so that you would hear all of the names and situations where the risen Jesus was seen by somebody or a bunch of somebodies. And St. Paul says that his experience on the road to Damascus was equivalent to all those other experiences of seeing the risen Jesus.

But you see, if people saw Him, the very first question that they would ask themselves and one another is, “How come?” How could this possibly be? And they looked for an answer in the only place they could look. We now call it the Old Testament; they called it The Scriptures, because that’s the only scriptures there were. And they found, in the Old Testament, multiple places where God talks about rescue and reward on the third day. So they found an answer to the question, “Why?”

The second fact card that Paul dealt us was – He was buried. That’s how dead He was, that they buried Him. But, if His resurrection had meaning, then His death must have had some meaning.

And so they looked again. And that’s the second interpretation card. They found, in their scriptures, multiple evidence that God talked about rescue, salvation, and forgiveness through some righteous agent that He would send.

And so there’s our house of cards. The first two lean against each other. He was seen. He rose. Why? Because the scriptures said he would. He was dead and buried. Why was He allowed to be killed? Because the scriptures predicted that that would happen.

Now, notice what St. Paul said at the beginning. He said, “I handed on to you these four cards; what I, myself, received. St. Paul was writing this letter around the year 50. He received this information exactly the same way that he just wrote it out. He received this information around the year 35, right after his remarkable conversion on the road to Damascus, while he was still being taught what people believed about Jesus, and when he first went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Peter and James. That’s when he received these four cards, exactly the same way. Which means that, if Jesus was crucified around the year 30, this creed – this little set of statements – was already being taught five years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. So close in time, it still had kind of the scent and taste of Jesus on it.

And all of the rest of our house of cards is built on these four cards, because, what is the reaction to this? What should we do because of this? How should we live? How am I connected to this, and what does it mean? Look at those four questions. “How am I connected to this” is all of our sacraments and our worship life. “How should I live” is all of our moral teaching. “What should I do” is all about how we live and communicate with one another about what we believe. And “what does this mean” is the entire spiritual history of the church. Our entire house of cards is built on these four things. Two facts - He rose, He died. Two interpretations – according to the scriptures He died for our sins, according to the scriptures He rose for our justification.

How should I live? What am I supposed to do? How am I connected to all of this? What does it mean?