Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Blessed are you in Christ Jesus. You are righteous and holy before God in Him, and the Kingdom of Heaven is yours in Him, because He who is the Blessed One has given Himself for you in love.
He has given Himself for you and for all the world, in order to redeem you from sin and death, to save you for Life everlasting with Himself, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, because He loves you with divine and holy Love. He has taken your place and suffered all, even death, to deliver you from the condemnation of the Law and the punishment you deserve, and to give you Peace.
He has hungered and thirsted for you and your salvation, and so has He come to justify you with His own righteousness by His Cross and Resurrection. He has come with divine compassion and with mercy. He has come in gentleness and with purity of heart. He has come to give to you His own inheritance as the Son of God; wherefore all the riches of heaven are yours in His Gospel.
He is merciful toward you. He freely and fully forgives you all your sins. He gives to you nothing less than Himself. And because you have been united with Him in your Baptism, all that He is and all that He has is now yours. As He has taken your place under the Law, so does He now give you His place at the Right Hand of His God and Father, even now within His Church on earth.
Everything that He has achieved, and all that He has become by His Cross and in His Resurrection from the dead, it is all for you. He needed none of this for Himself, but He has moved to help you from His great heart of Love. He has given His Life for you, in order to give you His own Life.
His place is your place, now and forever. His Cross and Resurrection are yours by your Baptism in His Name. His Ascension and His eternal Sabbath Rest are yours. Your life is found in Him. It is hidden with Christ in God, and it is safe and secure, it is steadfast and certain. You belong to Christ Jesus, and this same Lord Jesus Christ, the very Son of God, belongs to you. That is true.
But it is also true that, for now, you cannot see it with your eyes or feel it with your mortal senses. You cannot see the resurrected Life of Christ Jesus in your body of flesh and bones. You do not experience the Resurrection in your day-to-day life in this fallen and perishing world. Or, rather, you do not recognize it when you experience it, because it comes by and with the Cross. And so, you are beleaguered. Too often you are weighed down by your own sins and by the sins of those around you. You perceive that the world is filled with war and sickness and death; and you suffer, people persecute you. Even your nearest and dearest loved ones may disappoint you, abandon you, or forget about you. This is what seems true. This is what seems to define your life. But not so.
The Cross of Christ Jesus does not destroy you, for with His Cross He gives to you Himself.
It is by faith and not by sight. You cannot recognize the Truth apart from the Word and Spirit of God. But so does He speak His Word to you, and He pours out His Spirit upon you generously. As He did in your Holy Baptism, so does He continue to do through His Gospel. As often as your sins would accuse you, He speaks His Word of forgiveness, which does for you and gives to you what it says. He does not count your sins against you. He counts you righteous in Christ Jesus.
Though you are dying every day, death does not get to have you, nor does it get to have the last word concerning you. You are alive in Christ Jesus. And even when death wrecks your body, and you are laid in the ground, returning to the dust whence you were taken — even then you belong to Jesus, and He belongs to you. As death could not hold Him, death cannot hold you, either.
It is by faith and not by sight. And yet, it is true — for you and for your neighbor in Christ Jesus, though you cannot see it in your neighbor any more than you can see it in yourself. When you look at your neighbor outwardly, you do not see Christ Jesus. And when your neighbor deals with you, what you feel and experience with your senses is not the Lord Jesus Christ. You see your neighbor in his sinfulness, and you would run from him. Or you see your neighbor in her hurt and poverty, and so you would run from her. You do not recognize that the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these, to these poor and little ones, these hurting ones, these needy ones. You do not see Christ Jesus in your neighbor — except by the Word and Spirit of Christ, by faith in His Gospel.
You know what is true for your neighbor because of what Jesus has said concerning your neighbor. And so, too, you love your neighbor for Christ Jesus’ sake, because He loves your neighbor, as He also loves you. You count your neighbor, also, among those who have been redeemed by the Blood of the Lamb, because He has given Himself as the Ransom for many — the Ransom for all — for God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting men’s trespasses against them. You love your neighbor as the Lord loves you; and in loving your neighbor, you are loving Christ Jesus in your neighbor — and the same Lord Jesus is loving your neighbor through you.
Much the same thing is likewise true in the case of those who have gone before us in the faith, the saints we remember with thanksgiving on this night, who lived and died and now live forever in Christ Jesus, even as they now rest from their labors and their works do follow after them in Christ. The vast majority of those blessed saints you have not known in this body and life — numberless thousands — and yet, they also belong to you, because they and you both belong to one Lord, Jesus Christ. Together in Him, they and you are one “Blest Communion, Fellowship Divine.”
You and all the saints are knit together by the Blood of Christ, by the washing of the water with His Word and Holy Spirit in Holy Baptism. You are one Body in Christ Jesus with all those who yet abide in faith in this life on earth, and no less so with those who have been called from this vale of tears to His nearer presence. They are all your family. For if you belong to the Lord Jesus, then you belong to His Family. You cannot have Him by yourself or to yourself. With Him you have all His many brothers and sisters, the whole Household of God. They are all yours. For God has given them to you, to bless you by their example, by their confession, and by their deeds of love.
There are so many who have gone before you in the faith and confession of Christ Jesus, who have faithfully received and handed over His Gospel from one generation to the next. Mothers and fathers who have taught their children faithfully and well. Pastors and teachers who have cared for the Lord’s flock by and with His Word. Pious and faithful workers in the world who have served their neighbors within their callings and supported the Church and Ministry of the Gospel with their means. Bold confessors who have spoken the Truth in the face of persecution, threats, and hardship. Old and New Testament saints and believers. Our fathers in the early church, our mothers in the Middle Ages, and the 16th-century reformers, Luther, Melanchthon, and Chemnitz. And countless poets, composers, musicians, and artists, who have adorned the Church with love.
All of these belong to you in the one Body of Christ Jesus. And there are many, many more whom we do not even know. And yet, they are all known by the same Lord who knows and loves you.
In those whose lives you do know, not only those from the distant past, but the saints who have gone before you within your personal history — the pastor who baptized you and catechized you — the teachers who have taught you — your mother and father, your grandparents — brothers and sisters in the family of faith. These, too, have been given to you as examples of God’s mercy and faithfulness, and of the Christian faith and life under the Cross in the hope of the Resurrection.
These faithful men and women, boys and girls, young and old, are examples of perseverance in the midst of hardship. Examples of steadfast service in their own place and time, even where their particular stations in life might not be so glamorous or popular. The mother who takes care of her children. The garbage collector who picks up everyone’s trash. The janitor who sweeps up after everyone else has gone home. The waitress who works to serve her customers, in order to support her family. All of these are examples of faith and life, and you are strengthened by their example.
The Lord has not created you to live alone in isolation, as an island unto yourself. He has created you to share His own holy Fellowship and divine Life — that of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit — the one true God who is Himself an eternal Communion of three Persons. And He has called you by the Gospel into the one Body of Christ Jesus, to share in the Fellowship of all who believe and are baptized in His Name, in heaven and on earth. In remembering them, in giving thanks to God for them, in considering their lives and their confession, your own faith and life are strengthened — because they all point you to Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of the Faith.
It is Christ Jesus who is reflected in His saints. It is Christ who shines through them upon you.
I’ve often compared the saints who have gone before us (and our remembrance of those saints) to our beautiful stained-glass windows here at Emmaus — which also depict some of those saints! They offer some beautiful images of our Lord’s life in the Holy Gospels. And His saints are such windows, also. Myriad patterns and colors, different walks, different tongues, different names and locations, and yet the same golden Sunshine has beamed through each and every one of them to cast the Light of Christ upon you. And He does the same thing for others through you, as well.
You also are a living stained-glass window for your neighbors. You also are one of those in whom the Light of Christ Jesus is reflected, so that others see Christ in you — despite your frailties and flaws — because it does not depend on you; it depends upon Jesus, and He never falters or fails.
He shines upon your neighbor through your body and life in Him, even though you are still sinful and unclean; for your sin is not held against you, nor does it impede this Lamb of God, who has taken away your sin, from showing His mercy to others through you. In the midst of suffering, sickness, and death, He sustains your faith, that you might be a witness and example to others; that you might confess by your words and deeds the glories of God in Christ Jesus; that your neighbor might see the Love of God in you, and give glory to Christ, to God and the Lamb upon the Throne.
It is true. Even though you are often not (perhaps hardly ever) even aware of it. At the Last Day, when the King shall come and the Shepherd divides His sheep from the goats, the sheep don’t come before Him with a checklist of all their good deeds. They are surprised when they are told about their works of mercy; for they have done them naturally, because Christ has cared for them.
So does He likewise care for you, now and always. As He has been faithful to the saints who have gone before us because He loves them, and because He so loves you, He is faithful to you, as well.
The One who has called you is faithful, St. Paul writes, and He will do according to all of His good promises. Not one of them shall fail to come true.
“Lo, I am with you always,” He says. The One who comes to be your Judge is the One who has given Himself for you. He has become like you in every way. Not only is He a true Man of flesh and blood like yours, but He is the Man who has suffered all the consequences of sin, including all of your sin. A Man who has hungered and thirsted. A Man who has gone to death to save you.
It is true that belonging to Him means that the Cross also is yours. And there are days when the Cross is particularly weighty and painful. But that Cross of your dear Lord Jesus Christ shall not crush you or destroy you. For Jesus’ sake, you will not die but live. For your Life is hidden with Christ in God. Even your own sin cannot touch it. Nor can the devil touch it. And God’s own Law does not take it from you. It is yours because Christ is yours by the Ministry of His Gospel.
You have not yet seen Him, and yet, by His grace, by His Word and Holy Spirit, you do believe in Him, and you love Him from a heart of faith. And your hope in Him shall not be disappointed. You will not be put to shame. It has not yet appeared what you shall be, but at His appearing you shall be known, and you shall know Him, and you will be like Him. And with His righteousness you will shine like the stars forever and ever, as do those who have gone before us in Christ Jesus.
To Him be all the honor and glory and praise, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.
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