To say it’s been a strange few weeks would be like saying;”the sky is blue.” Little did any of us realize what effects the COVIT-19 pandemic would have on our community, state, nation and our world. Schools have been closed for the remainder of the school year. Stay-at-home orders have been enacted. Unemployment continues to rise as only “essential workers” are allowed to venture out from their homes.
This Holy week; the holiest of weeks for us as Christians will be a week we will never forget. I pray it will never be replicated again! I hate it!
Jesus says that this life's sorrows last only “a little while,” but they certainly don’t feel that way. In the moment, they can seem to last forever. The great comfort of the Gospel is that Jesus took your sins as His own and suffered what they deserve. You may trust His compassion that He knows your sorrows are real, because they took Him to the grave. Take great comfort in His resurrection, which shows Him to be victorious over them all.
What are we to make of this present reality? An invisible threat lurks on every door handle and in every cough. Grocery stores are emptying, and jobs are disappearing. A general feeling of uncertainty abounds, and anxiety is going to be on the rise.
No one is immune. The fact that someone is infected does not mean it is visible on the surface. Thousands have perished. More will die from this disease. There isn’t any known cure…yet. Epidemiologists are on this. We pray that effective treatments will soon be discovered. We depend on medicine to find solutions, but the One who cures your greatest ill is the Redeemer - Christ Jesus.
The voice of Christ can be heard even more clearly. There is something immovable. There is someone whose promise remains unaffected. There is a message which stands, no matter where the Corona -virus spreads. Unlike COVID-19, your sin already has a cure in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
And, in fact, Christ whom we proclaim knew sickness and death first-hand, so that He could be with us in our time of trial. He is not an anchor just for calm waters. He stands firm no matter how much the waves thrash about. The cross stands while the world spins.
1. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is your present reality. We are EASTER people.
A. Why seek the living among the dead?
This world is fallen. - It is a playground for the Devil in his main task: The destruction of faith in Jesus Christ. In this brokenness we call out. Searching for God. “I say to God, my rock: “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?” – Psalm 42:9-10
We are broken. “All the things we worshiped as idols in our society have been taken away by this pandemic. Sports, music and entertainment, the economy, all have been shut down. When you run out of all your made up strength and have no place else to stand, repent and return to God in Christ Jesus. Everything can and will fail you, but Jesus promises never to leave nor forsake those who have believed and are baptized into His life, death, and resurrection. The only eternal thing you can have to hold on to is Christ Jesus.” 1
Sickness is not simply a picture of sin. It’s also a result of sin. Human sickness was not an inherent part of the good world that the Father created. It only made its entrance as a result of our rebellion against God. So we have good reason to expect the removal of sin to lead to the end of the sickness. Jesus has healed our wounds by dealing with the root problem: your sin.
Jesus entered time and space to be your suffering servant. “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Like one from whom men hide their faces, He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. Surely He took on our infirmities and carried our sorrows; yet we considered Him stricken by God, struck down and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. Isaiah 53:3-5
All systems in this world are fallen and broken. You cannot place your ultimate trust in things. Like physical health. Financial security. And societal stability. They can all vanish before us in the twinkling of an eye.
B. “He is not here.”
You won’t find Jesus in death. Christ is Risen! This is your certain reality. We are Easter people. Christ is risen! We say this in all confidence in the words of the Te Deum “When You had overcome the sharpness of death. You opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers.” With the Psalmist we can say,” "You shall not fear the terror of the night nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that roams in darkness, nor the plague that ravages at noon." - Psalm 91:5-6
C. He is risen indeed!
See the place. And what do you behold? An empty tomb. A rolled away stone. “And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it.” (Vs.2) This stone. Was not rolled away for Christ to get out. It was rolled away so that you could enter. To find the tomb to be empty.
Transition: We are EASTER people because of the evidence. But there is more - we have seen Him.
2. An eye-witness encounter with Jesus Christ is what has changed this world.
A. Consider Mary.
Distraught over the events of the past few days. Her hopes and dreams had been crushed. She found herself walking to the tomb to mourn her loss. She was alone in her grief. Suffering in silence and isolation. She was a witness of Jesus’ arrest, trial, passion, death, burial. Who could forget such events?
Now an empty tomb – Even more drama! Her grief blinded her to the present reality. She could not see Jesus stand right before her. But with one word all grief and pain was gone. He spoke her name. “Mary!” He speaks your name – even in the midst of your fear and dread. He speaks to you; not in a voice from within yourself to confuse or frighten you. He comes to you in specific places. He comes to you in His Word of the Gospel which is proclaimed to you this day. He comes to you in the waters of your Baptism washing all your sins away. He speaks His word of forgiveness in His word of absolution. He gives His life to you –in His meal.
B. Christ goes before you.
To order your days and direct your path. No matter how this journey goes Christ will direct you. He goes before you to prepare a place for you. To give you His new life. You! You are The Father's beloved child.
This is your value, which Jesus has purchased you from sin, death, and the devil.
We look for self-worth outside ourselves to avoid looking at our sins, to deny them, to cover up our self-disappointment.
So, go ahead, look outside yourself, but to Jesus, and behold by faith, that His righteousness, His approval, now covers and hides every one of your sins.
You are now innocent in the Father's sight, beloved. Forgiven of your sins. An inheritor of eternal life.
So, stop looking at your phone. Stop looking at your job, your marriage, your children, stop looking at other people. Find your value, instead, in this Gospel, that Jesus died and rose again for you. If you have felt lonely and dejected. If you've sought your value in other people and been let down, look to Jesus and His cross. And believe that He, and He alone, knows all your pain.
"Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows."
All that endless sorrows you have in seeking approval, value, and worth, the reason you so desperately seek it, is to avoid looking at your sin. So the only way Jesus could heal you was to take that, your sin, away. As His own. And to the grave.
But on the third day, He rose again to a most glorious word of praise.
In His Baptism, God the Father had said, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."
Again, in His transfiguration, "This is My beloved Son."
God the Father is pleased beyond measure in everything Jesus says and does.
And so when the Father raised Him from the tomb, He proclaimed one more announcement for all to hear: "This is My beloved Son, who has taken your sins as His own, suffered punishment and hell in your place, and now, because He has done this, now, I am well pleased with you."
This is the Easter Spirit that Jesus speaks about today: "He will take of Mine and show it to you." (John 16:14) For the work of the Spirit is to proclaim the victory of Christ's resurrection.
The Easter Spirit shows you Jesus raised from the dead and that it means everything He accomplished is yours.
Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed! Hallelujah!
__________Words – 1,700
Passive Sentences –8%
Readability – 81.5%
Reading Level –4.3
The Risen Christ copyright © Ed Riojas Higher Things
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1 Taken from a FacebookTM post 4.07.2020 by Pr. Eric Johnson who fell victim to the Covid-19 virus
i. https://www.1517.org/articles/pandemic-preaching
ii T Daub Easter 4 “Patience” April 22, 2018 John 16:16-23 Prince of Peace Lutheran Church Hecla, South Dakota
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