Category: Easter

Text: Isaiah 65:17-25
Date: Easter Sunday + 3/27/16

Today almost everything is accomplished. Yes, Jesus said on the cross, “It is finished.” But what was finished? Finished was His work, His work of fulfilling God’s Law as a human being for us and for our salvation, then His work of carrying the weight of the sin of the whole world to the cross, carrying all sin, everything that separates man from God, to death. Yes, His death. There Jesus died. But in Jesus’ death, death itself died, was disarmed, was stripped of its power. Jesus’ resurrection from death is the triumph of His mission of redemption. Now, as with the catechumens last night, so we also and all who are baptized into Christ are baptized into His death in order that, as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too may walk in newness of life. But hold on. There’s more. Something is not yet finished. Continue reading “Say, "My Christ Lives"”

Text: John 17:11b-19
Date: Easter VII + 5/17/15 (5/17/15 Palindrome!)

Today is the great Sunday of transition. It is the third day after Jesus’ Ascension into heaven and the eighth day before the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. It is a day of questioning and wondering with the first disciples, “What are we to do now that Jesus is gone?” It is a day to mark the replacement of the apostle Judas (who we are to discover never really was an apostle but an apostate!) with the apostle Matthias. On this day we consider more deeply what was in Jesus’ heart and “high priestly prayer” on the night in which He was betrayed for the future of us, His disciples, in a world that will increasingly hate us. Continue reading “Seated at the Right Hand”

Text: John 15:9-17
Date: Easter VI + Mother’s Day + 5/10/15

It is still that night of high anxiety, Jesus’ last night with His disciples before His death. His last words to them are filled with urgency, but above all with love. He has drawn the disciples and you and me to know and to believe who He is, the great I AM, that is, our great Lord and God incarnate, in the flesh come to save us. We need to know and believe that or our faith will be misplaced and our understanding of His death and resurrection inadequate. He makes clear that we also need to know and believe how He will still be with us after His death and resurrection. Today we hear Him expand on that, saying, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). Continue reading “The Law of Love”

Text: John 15:1-8
Date: Easter V + 5/3/15

We remember that the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was instituted and commanded to be repeated as reported to us from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and St. Luke and the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians. Interestingly, St. John’s Gospel, written much later than the others, does not include the institution of this sacrament. Rather it is the Apostle and Evangelist St. John who records for us and reports five entire chapters of everything else Jesus said and did on that night in which He was betrayed. Today’s Gospel is one little selection, our Lord’s words, “I am the true vine…you are the branches.” Continue reading “The Fruit of Love”

Text: John 10:11-18
Date: Easter IV + 4/26/15

The Word of God before us on this Good Shepherd Sunday teaches us of two things, faith and love. It teaches that it is and can be only by faith in the One who lays down His life for us that we can have the forgiveness of our sins and a new, eternal life. At the same time it teaches us love as St. John so clearly summarizes it today, saying, “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers…. This is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another” (1 John 3:16, 23). Believe and love. Continue reading “Faith and Love”

Text: Luke 24:36-49
Date: Easter III + 4/19/14

To be “open minded” people usually mean that a person is willing to consider all sides of an issue. A person, on the other hand, whose mind is made up and will not give another view even a fair hearing is said to be closed minded. There is one other category, of course. For it can be said or suspected of some that they are so open minded that their brains have fallen out. Continue reading “Opened Minds”

Text: 1 John 1:7
Date: Easter II + 4/12/15

What’s the first word that comes to your mind when I say “sin”? “Transgression”? “Wrong”? “Bad”? “Debt”? I mean what is the word that comes to mind when I ask you what is the fundamental effect of sin? The first word that should come to mind when we talk about sin is “separation.” This is what it meant when, for instance, after their transgression of God’s Law, Adam and Eve discovered that they were naked. That is, because of sin they were now separated from God, and able to calculate everything now from the perspective of what is to my personal benefit or detriment. Not only were we separated from God but also from each other, the creation and even our own selves. Continue reading “All Together Now”

Text: Mark 16:1-8
Date: Easter + 4/4/15

All this year we have been sitting at the feet of Saint Mark the Evangelist. The main thing we have noticed is how he seems to be in such a hurry, he doesn’t want to fool around but to get to, as he says in the beginning, “the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God.” Therefore the first thing we discover is that Mark doesn’t have a Christmas story but begins with the grown up Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist and then thrust into the wilderness, as of first importance, to be tempted by the devil. It’s not too long until we discover opposition forming to Jesus and then He is on the road to His goal. The gospel, Mark has been hinting, is all about the death and resurrection of Christ. Well, here we are! The End. Or is it? Continue reading “The End?”

Text: Acts 1:12-14
Date: Easter VII + 6/1/14

This is that “strange” Sunday between our Lord’s Ascension into heaven and His sending of the Holy Spirit ten days later on the Day of Pentecost. We return to the upper room with the disciples, the same room in which Jesus washed their feet, predicted the betrayal of Judas, and instituted the sacrament of His body and blood ending with His “High Priestly Prayer” which we heard as today’s Gospel reading. The common theme of today’s readings is the Lord’s prayer for His disciples, “that they may be one” (John 17:11) and St. Luke’s observation in our first reading that “all these (were of) one accord,” “devoting themselves to prayer.” Continue reading “All With One Accord”

Text: John 14:15-21
Date: Easter VI + 5/25/14

In a few moments we will sing the Hymn of the Day, Martin Luther’s “Dear Christians, One and All, Rejoice.” In the seventh stanza Luther puts these words into Christ’s mouth speaking to us: “Stay close to Me, I am your rock and castle. …For I am yours, and you are Mine, And where I am you may remain; The foe shall not divide us” (LSB 556:7). These words are similar to what Jesus said to His disciples on the day before His sacrificial death, which we have been hearing in this Easter season from John chapter 14. They are words of promise, His promise, as He says today, not to “leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” Last week we admitted that we share the anxieties of those first disciples wondering where Jesus was going and where He is now that He can help us. Today we recall His words that night when He promised to send, as He said, “another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth.” This coming Thursday, the fortieth day of Easter, we celebrate our Lord’s Ascension into heaven and then, ten days later, the sending of His promised Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. Let us consider this Helper for our lives of faith. Continue reading “The Foe Shall Not Divide Us”