This is an illustration of the second half of C.S. Lewis' sermon 'The Grand Miracle', which was a quick summary of Chapter 14 of his Book called 'Miracles'. What does Christianity tell us about death, selectiveness, and vicariousness? The sermon was given during Easter Season in the final year of WW2 in 1945. Notes below:
(0:16) 'Every year God makes a little corn into much corn: the seed is sown and there is an increase. And men say, according to their several fashions, 'It is the laws of Nature,' or 'It is Ceres, it is Adonis, it is the Corn-King'. But the laws of Nature are only a pattern: nothing will come of them unless they can, so to speak, take over the universe as a going concern. And as for Adonis, no man can tell us where he died or when he rose again. Here, at the feeding of the five thousand, is He whom we have ignorantly worshipped: the real Corn-King who will die once and rise once at Jerusalem during the term of office of Pontius Pilate' (Chapter 15, Miracles, C.S. Lewis).
(0:29) Bergson's Modern and Western Type of 'Nature' religion or 'Life Force' religion: "We take over the existing trend towards 'development' [popular evolution] of increasing complexity in organic, social, and industrial life, and make it a god" (Miracles, Chapter 14). "In much modern thought about the survival of the human species, Death is the greatest of all evils" (Miracles, Chapter 14).
(1:16) Lassitude (physical or ?mental ?tiredness), delicacy (fragility or politeness), and compassion (empathy with others).
(1:49) "I am not so much afraid of death, as ashamed thereof; 'tis the very disgrace and ignominy of our natures that, in a moment, can so disfigure us that our nearest friends, wife, and children stand afraid and start [are startled or alarmed] at us" (Thomas Browne, 1642).
(1:55) 'We are baptized into the death of Christ, and it is the remedy for the Fall. Death is, in fact, what some modern people call 'ambivalent.' It is Satan's great weapon and also God's great weapon: it is holy and unholy, our supreme disgrace and our only hope; the thing Christ came to conquer and the means by which he conquered' (The Grand Miracle, 'Miracles' book).
(3:08) Romans 8.19-25 "The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration...in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from
its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies..."
What are the first fruits? Before machine planting, corn was sown by hand so only some corn seeds would start life at a perfect depth and would ripen at a slightly earlier date than the bulk of the crop. Also fruit trees produce some of their crops much earlier than the bulk of the harvest. So this fruit was your first 'sample crop' of the coming harvest year.
(3:36) Christ applies Psalm 82.6 ('You are gods, you are all sons of the Most High') as being said by God to those "to whom the word of God came" (John 10.35) � and this is a direct reference to all the Children of Israel in 1Kings 18.31: "Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, unto whom the word of the LORD came saying, 'Israel shall be your name' ". So we can't then limit "you are gods" to just the judges or leaders mentioned in the Psalm, as the word of God came to the entire nation at Mt. Sinai and they all heard it with their own ears. But, of course, those 'gods' who rejected and disbelieved the word of God (both leaders and people alike) died shamefully like men (Ps. 82.7, Jer. 16.4). Christ for a little time, having been made less than the angels because of the suffering of death, tastes death for every son who believes - bringing many sons to glory, to make Himself complete with us (see Heb. 2.8-9, and in 2 Peter 1:3-4 'they become partakers of the divine nature').
(3:51) Crocuses are small white, yellow, or purple flowers that grow in English gardens in the early spring.
(4:17) Summer 'pomps' are summer's 'splendours'. Think of a wild English garden or the countryside in Oxfordshire in midsummer.
(4:47) Handel's "Messiah", 'The Trumpets shall Sound' by Phil Driscoll. "In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed" (1 Corinthians 15.52-53).
