Please read the note below from Pastor Woodhouse regarding his sermon:

The Epiphany season gives us a chance to remember the ways Jesus Christ reveals His identity to the world and begins to point all of us to the work He has come to earth to complete. But we also know that the season of Epiphany will soon give way to Lent, when our attention turns more directly to the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, to Holy Week and the story of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection.

Our epistle reading from 1 Corinthians this week may lead us to wonder about that story of how Jesus Christ completed the work of saving us from our sins, however. Jesus proclaims from the cross “It is finished” just before He releases His spirit and dies, indicating that the work of atoning for the sins of the world has been completed at that moment. Christ’s resurrection and appearance to the disciples might therefore look like a celebration of what was already accomplished on Good Friday, or like additional verification that what Christ said He was doing was true. But Paul writes as if the fact of the Resurrection is far more than “icing on the cake”; it is essential for believing in our salvation. But we might wonder: Why did Jesus have to rise from the dead?