Talking Points with Pastor Lucas: Hope is here

The men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.” (Luke 24:5-7b, ESV)

Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

It’s March 31 as I write this. Minnesota is on its fourth day under the stay at home order. I don’t know the future—whether we’ll still be social distancing when you read this or trying to return to some semblance of normal, but I do know this: Easter joy still matters.

Easter looked different this year, but Jesus is the same.

I think it’s important to continue celebrating the Easter truth in our COVID-19 context. To be sure, this crisis has disordered our lives on this side of eternity. However, the resurrected Jesus brings with Him the promise of divine peace, comforting relief, and everlasting order.

At Easter, we celebrate as Jesus punches death in the face, laughs at the devil, and shines the light of His irreversible love on you, saying, “You are mine for all of eternity.” This is the mind-boggling goodness of the Good News, and it is for you.

So take this Good News into your hearts, into your minds, and into your lives. It’s not merely meant for Easter Sunday, but for every day of the week. Easter joy is not just a once-a-year event. You’re invited to take it into your homes, to your family, to your friends, and to your workplaces—even if they are still web-based from our social distancing guidelines.

Friends, the tomb is empty! Death has been defeated. Hope is here. Don’t keep it in. Like a sneeze that wants to get out, let it out. Shout it out! In fact, take it out to the streets and up to the rooftops. Shout it so that everyone can hear: Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Jesus bids us to come and die—like He did.

Jesus went from life to death, but that was so He could take you from death to life. Now, I realize coming to the point of death is not something we look forward to. With each year of age, with every new body ache and every new pain, along with every sickness or wretched disease or pandemic that afflicts us or our loved ones, death inevitably draws closer. And if we are being honest, it often terrifies us because we know all the pain and the heartache that come with death—most of us intimately so from the journey through the valley of the shadow of death with a loved one.

Even so, that’s precisely the nature of what it means to be a Christian. It’s what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. When Jesus calls you to follow Him, He bids you to come and die. He asks you to die to yourself but to live to Him. In other words, He asks you to repent of everything that would come between you and Him, to put to death in yourself every idol, desire, and impulse that means more to you than Jesus does.

That’s not easy, of course. It can be painful. Death always is, you know. But it is a divinely designed death. For when you are baptized into Jesus, the Word of God says you are baptized into His death so that you might live with Him in His resurrection.

“We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:4)

In other words, you go with Jesus from life to death so that you can go with Jesus from death to life.

Of course, that’s easier said than done. The madness of this pandemic world, the chaos and disorder of our time—it’s threatening all around us. But Jesus comes and stares it all in the face with us as the way, the truth, and the life. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. He is the great savior of great sinners, a fear-eater and a death-defeater. He fights for you.

Jesus bids us to follow Him to life.

The simple fact is this: One day, sooner or later, we are all going to come fact-to-face with death. Sin has guaranteed it. There’s no escaping it. And as scary as it is to think about it, and as gut-wrenching and agonizing as it is to see our loved ones endure it, the triumph of Easter lets us face death with new confidence—even joy.

Not that we take death lightly, but rather Easter brings with it a great song and declaration that stares death in the face and says, “You don’t win! I know that my redeemer lives. And that means He wins!” It also means that you and everyone who dies believing in Jesus Christ will live again, too.

Easter blasts out to every last casket, coffin, and crypt that Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Death does not get the final say. Thanks be to God that Jesus gets the final say. He is the resurrection and the life. You are safe with Him now and always.

Your brother in Christ,

Pastor Lucas

Rev. Dr. Lucas V. Woodford
President
Minnesota South District, LCMS
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