He Has Risen, Just as He Said

The Word of the Lord has been fulfilled, and the purpose of His good creation has been perfected, in the Resurrection of Christ Jesus from the dead.  He has obtained and established Sabbath Rest for the people of God, sanctified the graves of His saints, and opened up the eternal Eighth Day of everlasting Life for both the soul and the body of His Christians.

So, what’s the problem?

There is not simply doubt and unbelief, but an outright refusal to believe on the part of so many people.  Even the disciples of Jesus, though they love Him, they still go looking for Him in all the wrong places.  And you are no different and no better.  You also look for Jesus in the grave, among the dead, that is to say, in the dying things of this fallen world.  But you will not find Him there.

There is also a persistent fear, as much or more than anything else, in response to the Resurrection of the Lord.  And in that fear is found the height of sin and the utter perversity of unbelief.

Such hardness of heart and debilitating fear belong to the curse and consequences of sin, which are at work in your heart and life, in your body and soul, as well.

You are doubtful, despairing, and afraid, even in the face of the Resurrection, though your sin is forgiven and death has been defeated.  And you keep on looking for help in all the wrong places.

Thank the Lord that He does not leave you to wallow in your misguided misery and fatal attempts at self-medication.  Instead, He deals with your sins, and He saves you from them by His Gospel.

The Cross of Christ has atoned for all of your sins, and the Resurrection of the Crucified One is your Righteousness and Life with God.  So, then, by the preaching of His Cross and Resurrection in His Name and stead, He calls you to repentance and to faith in His forgiveness of your sins.

It is likewise the Word and preaching of His Gospel that points you to Christ Jesus and gives Him to you.  Not so much that it gives you directions for finding Him, but that He Himself finds you!

He has gone ahead of you, in order to blaze the trail and open the way for you, through death and the grave into the Resurrection and eternal Life.  But He has not left you alone and lonely, helpless and afraid.  He meets you on the way, and He speaks (again and again) His gracious Word to you.

And as the Cross and Resurrection were accomplished and fulfilled, just as He said, so the Words and promises that He speaks to you by the Gospel are full of the Spirit, the Truth, and the Life.

Thus, you can be sure and certain of the “Galilee” to which He sends you, where He meets you:

It is the Church of His Gospel–Word and Sacraments, on earth as it is in heaven.

It is the washing of the water with His Word and Holy Spirit in your Holy Baptism, which remains in effect and saves you, not only here in time, but for eternity hereafter in body and soul.

So, too, it is the spoken Word of Holy Absolution, by which He forgives you all your sins.

And it is the Body and Blood of Christ Jesus in the Holy Communion, given and poured out for you, that you may eat and drink, and abide in Him, and He abide in you, unto Life everlasting.  Behold, that is where He is with you always, and where you lay hold of Him and worship Him.

Do not be afraid!  Here is the One who is your Righteousness and Holiness, your perfect Peace and Sabbath Rest.  Taste and see that the Lord is good, and that He has risen indeed!  Alleluia!

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

In the Fear and Faith of God

I know that you are here in church for the Divine Service because you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified, dead, and buried, but who has risen from the dead, just as He said; who now lives and reigns to all eternity.

Have no fear!  You are in the right place, where the Word of Christ has directed you to meet Him.  The Liturgy of preaching and His Sacrament is the Galilee to which He sends you.  Here He meets you with the proclamation of His Gospel of forgiveness; and here, by faith, you behold Him.

If you find yourself perplexed and confused by mixed feelings of both faith and fear, both joy and sadness, both confidence and doubt, take heart and do not be dismayed.  Everything is shaken up and turned inside-out by the Cross and Resurrection of Christ Jesus.  And you, also, are called to die and rise with Him, to be crucified, buried, and born again — as in your Holy Baptism, so now by daily contrition and repentance and confession of your sins throughout your life on earth.

Here on earth there is the paradox of the now-and-not-yet.  By the grace of God, through faith in the Word of Christ, you have entered His Sabbath Rest, and you do have peace with God.  But it is also the case that, for now, you still continue to work out your salvation in fear and trembling.

So, what are the particular fears and uncertainties that attack you and assail your faith and joy?

Are you afraid of getting into trouble with your boss or supervisor, or perhaps even losing your job?  And if so, what are you willing to do or say, or what will you tolerate, for the sake of money?

Or do you worry that, sooner or later, you will be found out for a fraud, or that your past sins and failings will come to light, and that you’ll end up losing face with your peers and colleagues?

Is it death that ultimately scares you the most?  Maybe the precariousness of life in general, the dying of your friends and loved ones, or the growing frailty of your own health and mortal flesh.

What are you willing to barter for life and health, for safety and security, or for a little peace and quiet?  What would you give simply to be liked, or to be left alone?

The life that you are looking for is one of two things: It is either the idolatry of a false god, which will fail you.  Or it is the Life with God that is yours by faith alone in Christ Jesus, your Savior.

Though you struggle with the sins and weaknesses, the doubts and fears, the frailties and failures of your fallen nature, I know that you are in church looking for Jesus — and rightly so.  He is here!  And He is yours.  You are here because you are His disciple, and you are His disciple because He has called you and catechized you by and with His Word and Holy Spirit.  So do not be afraid.

He has given you the new birth of Holy Baptism, and He Himself has risen in you to will and to do what is pleasing to His God and Father, who is now also your God and Father.  So it is that you live by faith in His Gospel!

It is by and with that Holy Gospel that Christ Jesus meets you here with His forgiveness of all your sins.  He greets you with grace, mercy, and peace, with life instead of death, with comfort for your doubts and fears, and with the safety and security of His great salvation.

Though He has risen from the dead, leaving behind His borrowed tomb and the dust of the earth, He plants His feet upon the earth here at His Altar in His Church.  Lay hold of Him here, according to His Word, in His Body given and His Blood poured out for you and for the many.  Lay hold of Him here in the Liturgy of His Gospel, and worship Him with joy in the fear and faith of God.

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Worship the Lord by Faith in His Word

It is the One who was crucified for you, who suffered and died in your place, who has also risen from the dead and lives forever.  Thus do you rise with Him and live with Him in His place.

As by His Baptism in the Jordan River He took your sin and death upon Himself and bore it in His Body to the Cross, so by your Baptism into Him have you received His Resurrection and His Life everlasting, in your body and your soul, through His forgiveness of all your sins.

The wages of sin is death.  Therefore, where there is forgiveness of sins, there is salvation from death and the free gift of eternal life with God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

It is because His death has atoned for the sins of the world that death has been defeated; and as it had to relinquish its hold on Christ Jesus, so must it also let go of all who belong to Him.  It is a lie of the devil to suppose that death is simply a normal and natural part of life; that is not the case.  Death is the devastating consequence of sin, but it has been undone by the Cross of Christ.

Therefore, the stone is rolled away, the tomb has been emptied.  The grave could not contain the Lord Jesus, and it shall not contain you: His disciple, His brother or sister, His friend.

Even so, that is not yet what you experience in your life here on earth, where the ground sometimes shakes beneath your feet, and airplanes can fall out of the sky and crash into mountains; where people die in countless ways, and you get sick and frightened; and where you are not the faithful disciple, brother, sister, or friend of Jesus that you are called to be and ought to be.

And I’ll not say or suggest that none of that matters.  It does, actually.  When you live in the fear of unbelief, you’re as good as dead already, even while you go about the pretense of living.  Then you have no peace or rest within yourself, and you have no love for others.

But the Lord has not left you without help or recourse.  Indeed, He is Himself your Strength and your Song, as He has become your Salvation.  Not just once upon a time, but now and forever.

Though He has risen from the dead, and He is never to die again, He has not forgotten you, nor shall He ever leave you or forsake you.  He has gone ahead of you, it is true, through death and the grave into the Resurrection and the Life everlasting; yet, He has not left you behind in the dust.  Although He is not visible to your eyes, He is actually not far away or absent from you.

His feet are rather firmly planted on the earth in the midst of His Church, where, by His Word of the Gospel, He meets you and greets you with His forgiveness of sins and His good gift of life.

The Font, the Altar, and the Pulpit from which His Word sounds forth in His Church, these are the Mountain to which He calls you and sends you, the Galilee where He now reveals Himself to you.

Everything depends upon His Word, just as everything has happened according to His Word, in fulfillment of the Holy Scriptures.  It is by His Word that He befriends you, and by His Word that He makes of you His disciple, His brother or sister.  It is likewise by His Word of the Gospel that He keeps you steadfast in the true faith, in place of your doubts and fears, anxieties and worries, so that even in the midst of death you live.

It is by His Word, therefore, and not by your own wisdom, reason, or strength, that you find Him — where He has promised to be with you — and you lay hold of Him by faith and worship Him.

It is likewise by His Word — by faith in His Word, and by His grace — that you speak in love to your neighbor in the world.  And it is His Word that you are given to speak, including especially His Word of forgiveness for those who have trespassed against you.

There is no place in the light of Easter for any refusal to forgive or to be reconciled to your brother or sister.  For your neighbor’s trespasses, along with your own trespasses, have been removed in the Resurrection of Christ Jesus from the dead.  Together you live by the grace of that Gospel.

Though your sins have been like scarlet, His Word of the Gospel has cleansed you white as snow.

And though the Lord remains here with you on earth, He has also hidden your life with Himself in God, until your body, too, shall be raised from the dead and glorified and live forever; for He has taken you with Himself, in His own Body, through death into life.  So it is that, already now, you live, as it were, a heavenly life on earth.  And that is especially the case here at His Altar.

Though you cannot see Him — but the day will dawn when you do, with your own eyes, from your own risen flesh — yet, even now, hear His Word to you, and know that His Word is true.  For the One who was crucified for you, who has risen just as He said, also speaks to you here and now:

“This is My Body, given for you.  This is My Blood, poured out for you.  Eat and Drink.  All your sins are forgiven.  And as I live, so shall you.”

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Remember the Word that He Speaks to You

The Resurrection of our Lord should not come as such a shocking surprise to His disciples, but it does.  Even His enemies remembered what He had said, that He would rise again on the third day.  But His own disciples either don’t remember, or they simply don’t believe it.  When confronted with the empty tomb and the news of the Resurrection, they are dumbfounded, perplexed, amazed, frightened, confused, and incredulous.

As sad and disappointed as the disciples were, it appears they would have been more comfortable and content with a dead body in the ground than with the Living One who has risen from the dead.

So what is your excuse?  Why do you look for the Living One as though He were still dead and buried?  Why do you not believe the Gospel?  For the fact is, that all your efforts to find happiness and satisfaction, to find or make a life for yourself in your own ambitious plans and enterprising schemes, are simply your own version of scouring the graveyard and dredging the tombs.

You’ll actually get nothing and nowhere apart from the forgiveness of your sins; for your sins will kill you dead forever.  But forgiveness comes only from the crucified and risen Lord Jesus.

You’ll not get forgiveness and life from your family and friends; not from your job, nor from your hobbies; neither from your achievements and success and popularity in the world.  No matter where you go or what you do, you’ll not find Jesus apart from His Word of the Gospel; and you’ll not find life apart from Jesus.

So, then: Remember His Word to you.

Remember, not so much with your mind and nostalgic emotions, but with your ears.  Remember the Word of Jesus by listening, by hearing it preached to you.  For He remembers you by preaching His Gospel, His forgiveness of all your sins; and you remember Him by hearing.

And faith comes by such hearing of His Word.

Do not despise such preaching of the Gospel.  Do not regard it as nonsense.  Do not suppose that the Word of Jesus is empty and unable to meet your every need.  So long as you maintain that obstinate unbelief, you’ll remain confused and frightened, entombed in a kind of living death.

But the Living One does not leave you in dismay.  He has not forgotten you, nor does He fail to help you.  He has come to you in the midst of death, and He raises you up to life with Himself.

It is for this that He suffered and was crucified, that is, to atone for your sins.  And, having done so, He has risen victorious; so that you, also, are raised up alive through His forgiveness.

That is how He remembers you: with His forgiveness of your sins, with His Gospel of Life in place of death.  He remembers you with Holy Absolution.  He remembers the significance of your Holy Baptism, that you have thus been crucified, dead, and buried with Him, in order to rise and live.

He remembers you with His holy Body and His precious Blood, with which He feeds and nurtures you in body and soul.  Such nonsense, it seems; and yet, it is the Truth.  Here is the Body of the Lord Jesus, the Living One among the dead, that you may have life.

Again, and again, remember His Word to you:  Take, eat; this is My Body.  Drink this Cup, it is the New Testament in My Blood.  For you.  For the forgiveness of all your sins.

Eat and drink. Arise, and Live!

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

At the Name of Jesus

If you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified, you do not have to wonder where to find Him. You are in the right place, where the Lord has risen for you, just as He said, and where His messenger has been established upon this Cornerstone of the crucified and risen Christ Jesus.

This is where you see Him, even now, by faith; who at the last shall stand upon the earth, and with your own eyes, from your own flesh, you shall see Him, just as He is, and you will be like Him. That is His promise to you, and His Word is true.

But are you afraid that you will not be able to find Him?
Or, are you more afraid that He will find you?

It is right that you should fear the Lord, your God, but do not be afraid. Rather, let your fear be tempered by love and governed by faith, so that you lay hold of His feet and worship Him.

He has risen from the dead, but He has not departed from you. He has taken His stand upon the earth, from Jerusalem to Galilee, even to the ends of the earth. And He comes to meet you on the way, in the proclamation and confession of His Word.

He goes before you, through death into life, but He does not turn His back on you. He calls you to Himself and greets you as His own dear brother.

Take to heart what that means — that you are not only His disciple, but His brother. For you also, by your Baptism into His tomb and out again, are a son of God in Christ.

It is by His Name, with which you have been named in Holy Baptism, that you are raised up to stand in the presence of God, to live and walk with Christ.

In the end, every tongue will confess that holy Name of Jesus, and there will be no denying it in heaven or on earth. No amount of money will silence that confession.

For now, sinful unbelief, hardness of heart, the love of money and the fear of man, cause men to tremble and shake like an earthquake and bring them to death in body and soul. But you bear the Name of the crucified and risen Christ in your body and life, as a Christian; so that you confess His Name, His Cross and Resurrection, with your lips and your life. Let that be the blessed privilege and purpose that guards and governs your life on earth.

In all your words and actions, remember that Christ Jesus has been crucified for your transgressions, and for the sins of the world, and that He has been raised for your justification.

So, too, your fellow Christians, all of them, are likewise sons of God and brothers of Christ. Worship Him by loving them, and worship Him by faith, by laying hold of Him here, where He has planted His feet on earth.

Do not be afraid. For by His gracious Word you shall see Him, as He said. Not for death, but for life.

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.