Firstfruits

“When you come into the land that I give you and reap its harvest, you shall bring the sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest, and he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord.” – Leviticus 23:10-11

Have you ever experienced the start of something that filled you with great anticipation and hope for what was to come? I think of the first time I saw Ellie on a sonogram. The opening prelude to an orchestral piece in a concert hall. Appetizers in a multi-course meal at a good restaurant. The first time I held Dave’s hand. I think the moment when the Israelites held a handful of the first of their barley harvest was a moment like that. They were holding the answer to God’s promises: they had arrived in the promised land after years of wandering and battle. They had planted their own crops. But this first of the harvest was also a promise that more was to come. 

We talk about Jesus as the lamb that died on the Passover, or how the Holy Spirit came on Pentecost, but we don’t as often discuss what it means that Jesus rose on the day of Firstfruits. This was the day when they took that first handful of the harvest and gave it to God in an act of thanksgiving and trust. The point of the firstfruits is that there will be many more. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15, “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep… For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.” Jesus rose, and because he did, we will too. His resurrection was a firstfruits of what is to come: this is the great hope that we have.

N. T. Wright expounds on this in his book Surprised By Hope. “Many Christians,” he writes, “don’t know what the ultimate Christian hope really is… The classic Christian answer to the question of death and beyond is not so much disbelieved as simply not known.” What are we waiting for? What are we going to do about it in the meantime? The answers to those questions lie in the realization that salvation is not about “going to heaven when we die”; it is not the death of the body and the escape of the soul. Salvation is being raised to life in God’s new heaven and new earth. “Heaven, in the Bible, is not a future destiny but the other, hidden, dimension of our ordinary life—God’s dimension,” Wright explains. “God made heaven and earth; and at the last he will remake both and join them together forever.” 

Jesus’ bodily resurrection is a promise of not only our own resurrection, our own new bodies, but the recreation of the world. The things we do in our life now are not just to make it more bearable until we leave it—they are a part of building for God’s kingdom. They are not valueless because God will raise it to new life. Jesus’ resurrection is my hope for everything: for myself, for my work, for the world I live in. It is the reason I believe that nothing I do is in vain. That day, when the Israelites reaped their first harvest, when they felt hope and anticipation grip their hearts and fill their hands: that was the day Jesus rose.