The Bee That Already Lost Its Stinger

In 2018, a beekeeper named Marcus Rivera in San Antonio, Texas, was teaching his seven-year-old daughter how to work the hives. She froze when a honeybee landed on her bare arm. "Daddy, it's going to sting me," she whispered, tears already forming. Marcus knelt beside her and pointed. "Look closely, mija. See how its back end is smooth? That bee already stung something else. It lost its stinger. It can land on you, crawl on you, even buzz in your ear — but it cannot hurt you. The worst thing it could ever do is already done."

His daughter watched the bee walk across her skin and fly away. She laughed.

That is the picture Paul paints in 1 Corinthians 15. Death still buzzes. It still lands on us. It crawls across our hospitals, our funerals, our worst midnight fears. But Paul looks it dead in the face and taunts it: "Where, O death, is your sting?" Because on a Friday afternoon outside Jerusalem, death drove its stinger into Christ — and lost it forever. The worst thing it could ever do is already done.

Death is now a bee without a stinger. It can frighten us, but it cannot finish us. Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. The sting is gone. And we are free to laugh.