Celebrating Easter for What It Is

[Below you'll find live stream videos of the traditional and modern Easter worship services of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centercille, Ohio, along with the text of the message for the day. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!]





Luke 24:1-12

It seems that much of the world celebrates Easter. Every year, stores ply their Easter food, Easter candies, Easter eggs, Easter cards, and even Easter wardrobes. None of this has much to do with Easter itself, of course.

In the meantime, in churches around the world, pastors and worship leaders tell their congregations, “Christ is risen!” and congregations respond, “He is risen, indeed!” But I wonder if even we Christians have a clear handle on what it means to celebrate Easter for what it is. Easter, along with Good Friday which precedes it, is, as I’ve said before, the most important event in history. Do we celebrate it as though that were true?

In a sermon preached thirty-two years ago, the late Lutheran pastor and novelist, Bo Giertz, talked about three things that make a happy Easter, that is, an Easter in which we truly celebrate the day for the eternity-changing event it is. I want to point to those three things as we consider today’s Gospel lesson in which Luke the evangelist tells us what happened on the first Easter, the day when Jesus Christ, truly God and truly human, rose from the dead.

The first element of celebrating Easter for what it truly is, Giertz says, is remembering again that Jesus rising from death was “unexpected and unbelievable.” You and I may know–you and I may even be–people who have, medically speaking, been brought back from the dead. We’ve all thrilled at accounts of people’s NDEs, near-death experiences. But none of us know–and none of us are–people who, like Jesus, were dead and buried on a Friday, laid lifeless in a tomb on a Saturday, and raised to life again on a Sunday. It’s not within our normal experience.

When the women–Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and others–went to Jesus’ tomb early on Easter Sunday morning, they had no expectation of learning that Jesus had risen from the dead. Jesus had said many times during His ministry that, as the Old Testament prophesied of God’s Messiah, He was going to die and then rise again. But it was hard for the first disciples to believe that such a thing could happen. It’s harder still to believe that a person who dies and rises, sinless Himself, would do it not for Himself, but for others, you and me, and for every other sinful human being. As the women gazed into the empty tomb on that first Easter Sunday, two men–angels, messengers of God–say, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?  He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified, and on the third day be raised again.’ ” (Luke 24:5-7) It’s now, when the Word of God the Son, Jesus, is preached to them, that they remember and begin to have faith. (Luke 24:8) That’s the power of God’s Word. It can create faith where there has been unbelief.

We shouldn’t be hard on the women for not “getting it” at first, for needing to be reminded of Jesus’ promises. We have the same problem. We confess our faith in Jesus during worship on Sunday mornings and as soon as the service is ended, we’re accosted by our own sinful impulses, by temptation and adversity, and, worst of all by unbelief. Martin Luther spoke for us all when he wrote, “We need to hear the Gospel every day because we forget it every day.”

And if it’s hard for believers like Mary Magdalene and you and me to remember that Jesus has risen from the dead for the whole cosmos, we should have compassion and patience for all the unbelievers in the world who find it hard to believe in Jesus conquering sin, death, and futility through His resurrection.

The Church Council is currently reading a book, The Reason I Believe. It’s a book of Christian apologetics. Christian apologetics seeks to explain the empirical bases for believing in God and the crucified and risen Jesus, God the Son. When I was an atheist, it was partly from reading or hearing Christian apologetics, as in Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and Who Moved the Stone by Frank Morison, that my mind was opened to the possibility of faith in Christ. Christians need to know how to lovingly and respectfully respond to the skepticism and unbelief many feel about faith in Christ. But apologetics will not cause people to believe in Jesus. A man I know used to say, “I accept the fact that Jesus rose from the dead. Why do I need to follow Him?” It’s only the Word of God, shared with compassion, respect, and patience by many Christians, that will create faith in the risen Jesus Christ. That’s how I came to believe in Jesus and in Easter. The Bible tells us that “faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ…” (Romans 10:17) It’s the Word about Jesus, and the Word alone, that creates faith in Christ and the outrageous good news that, “Jesus Christ is risen from the dead!” Christians need to learn to speak it to all the world.

The second element in celebrating Easter for what it is, Giertz says, is to remember that “the Resurrection is a fact, a unique fact.”  

As to its facticity, we have more documentation of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, closer to the events themselves, than we do for many of the most prominent figures of ancient history.

And it isn't just ancient documentation that underscores the truth of Jesus' resurrection. Israeli theologian and historian Pinchas Lapide, an orthodox Jew, did not become a Christian and claimed that Jesus was only the Messiah for Gentiles, concluded, "I accept the resurrection of Easter Sunday not as an invention of the community of disciples, but as a historical event." Based on the facts and Jesus' track record, Lapide also concluded that Jesus would return to this world at the end of history.

Jesus' resurrection is also a unique fact. We may be inspired by the words and actions of human beings in history or by the beauty of the universe God created, but only Jesus, risen and living, can forgive our sins, cover us with His grace, make us new, and give us life with God to be enjoyed even now in this imperfect world and one day to be enjoyed in the perfect peace of eternity when we live in His direct presence. Only Jesus can say, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” (John 11:25-26)

The third thing that lets us truly celebrate Easter is that “Jesus’ resurrection has decisive consequences for us all.”  Jesus’ resurrection was the beginning of the transformation God is going to bring to all who belong to Him. Jesus’ Easter victory over sin and death–our sin and death–shows us that when He returns to this creation at the end of its life, the old heavens and the old earth will pass away and the new heavens and new earth will come into being. It will be a new creation: free of sin, death, and futility.

The risen Jesus Himself shows us what this new creation will be like for those who believe in Him. For the most part, on that first Easter, Jesus’ disciples failed to recognize Him in His risen form. He seemed like just another man. But He was different. Jesus was like Himself, but different, new. He still bore the scars of His crucifixion and, like any other human being when hungry, asked for something to eat. But He also walked past walls into locked rooms. He was unbound by space or time. When Jesus raises believers in Him from the dead, we will no longer be bound by the constraints of this universe, nor by sin, death, or unbelief. The Bible says that believers in Jesus already are children of God and that while “what we will be has not yet been made known…[we do] know that when Christ appears [that is, when He returns], we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2) This is the greatest and most amazing consequence of Easter: Because Jesus died and rose for us, all who believe in Him, we will one day be like the risen Jesus. Today, Jesus is with us through His Word, the Sacraments, and the Church. On the day when He returns to this world, He will call us from death and raise us to live in God’s presence in, as The Small Catechism puts it, “in righteousness and purity forever.”

Friends, we can celebrate Easter with joy because, on Easter, God did something unexpected and, from a human perspective, unbelievable, the Resurrection of Jesus, in which we can only believe by the power of God’s Word.

We can also celebrate Easter with joy because Jesus’ resurrection is an accomplished fact, attested to by more than five hundred practical, hard-headed, less than perfect, self-centered people, Jesus’ first followers who, despite their imperfections, risked and, often, without anything to be gained in this world and much to be lost. gave their lives to pass on the good news that they had seen and witnessed, that Jesus Christ, truly God and truly human, actually died and actually rose from the dead to give forgiveness and eternity to all who believe in Him.

We can also celebrate Easter with joy because Easter has consequences for all who believe, consequences that will last for all eternity. Even as He faced the cross, Jesus could exalt over the eternal consequences of His crucifixion and resurrection for all who believe. As He told God the Father in prayer, “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.” (John 10:28)

We have good reason to truly celebrate Easter, folks. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Amen

The Big Surprise

[This message was shared during the three Easter Sunday worship services with the people of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio and our friends and guests. Plan on worshiping with us this coming Sunday. Traditional worship happens at 8:45 AM and Modern worship happens at 11:00 AM.]

Luke 24:1-12
On the first Easter Sunday morning, Jesus’ disciples were taken by surprise. None of them had expected that Jesus would rise from the dead.

We may find their surprise surprising. After all, Jesus had told them often enough what He was on earth to do. 

For example, Jesus once told His followers, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life (Luke 9:22).” 

Later, speaking of Himself in the third person as “the Son of Man,” Jesus said: “We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. He will be delivered over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, insult him and spit on him; they will flog him and kill him. On the third day he will rise again (Luke 18:31-33).”

The gospels tell us that every time Jesus mentioned that He was going to be crucified and then rise from the dead, they didn’t get it. 

Their incomprehension is understandable for several reasons. 

For one, I doubt that any of us have ever known someone who was dead for several days, then brought back to life by God the Father. Neither had the disciples.*

The other reason the disciples would have found Jesus’ prediction of His own death and resurrection incomprehensible was cultural. While many Jews believed that there would be a resurrection of God’s righteous people (like the Pharisees), they didn’t believe that one individual could be raised from the dead. For the Jews, resurrection was a group activity to take place at the end of history.

And so, the first Easter Sunday caught the first disciples off-guard. We see that in our gospel lesson, Luke 24:1-12. Let’s take a look at it together. 

Verse 1: “On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb.”

A contingent of Jesus’ female disciples, people who have followed Him since His ministry began in Galilee go on the first day of the week, Sunday, to anoint Jesus’ dead body. This day will also turn out to be “the first day” of a new life for them and all who confess Jesus as their Lord. But they don’t know that yet.

Verse 2: “They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them.”

Luke’s account of the first Easter begins much as his account of Jesus’ birth began. Just as an angel came to Mary, a young woman who trusted in God, to give the surprising news that she would bear the Savior of the world, on Easter, women who trusted in God were met by two men we will learn later in Luke’s gospel were also angels, to give equally surprising news. If any so-called Christian tries to tell you that women are inferior to me, don’t believe them. A man didn’t give birth to the Savior; a woman did. (Most women will tell you that if birthing were left up to men, there would be no new babies born.) Men weren’t the first ones entrusted with proclaiming the Easter message; women were.

But, lest we think this means women are perfect, we come to verse 5: “In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: “The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.”’ Then they remembered his words.”

The women, overwhelmed by the gleaming angels reflecting the blazing perfection of God, fell to their knees while the angels chastised them. “Why are you looking for a risen Savior in a place for the dead? [It's like the angels are telling them, "Duh!"] Don’t you remember all the times He told you that He was going to rise again?” It’s with this reminder that the women, who had heard Jesus foretell His death and resurrection, remember.

Haven’t you had the same experience? You’ve had to be reminded of something repeatedly before you could remember it...and maybe you don't remember even then.

In one of his Narnia books, C.S. Lewis tells about an important message being entrusted to a young girl named Jill by the fictional Christ figure of those books, Aslan. Make sure you review what I’m telling you all the time, Aslan tells Jill, otherwise you might forget it. Of course, Jill doesn’t do what Aslan tells her to do and when the time comes for her to remember the message, she’s forgotten it all together.

Sometimes, I allow myself to get so caught up in the stuff of life that I forget about God’s promises. 

Ones like, “I am with you always (Matthew 28:20).” 

And like, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die (John 11:25-26).” 

Or, “...whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him (Colossians 3:17).”

The Bible repeatedly tells us to remember God’s Word and God’s promises. God told His ancient people: “These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates (Deuteronomy 6:6-9).” And, in the New Testament book of Hebrews, God tells Christians through the preacher: "...let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another..." (Hebrews 10:24-25)

Had Jesus’ first disciples spent more time listening to and reminding themselves and each other of God’s Word, they wouldn’t have been so surprised that first Easter. 

And though God's love for us, its depth and breadth, always is surprising me, aybe we wouldn’t be so surprised by the things that happen to us in this life or so hesitant about following where Jesus leads us if we spent more time remembering God’s Word and God’s promises given through Christ! 

We need to learn to be less self-reliant and more God-reliant.

Verse 9: “When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.”

Faith in the crucified and risen Jesus, the faith that saves us from sin and death, isn’t easy. One of my favorite Christian musicians, Steve Taylor, says simply, "It's harder to believe than not to to."

We can’t decide to believe. Faith is a gift from God given to those who are willing to believe, who understand that the notion of a risen Savior is nonsense to a disbelieving world. 

It will seem like nonsense to us too, unless we leave ourselves open to the Holy Spirit giving faith to us when we’re faced with temptation, despair, adversity, grief, or death. We need be open to letting God surprise us again and again! 

On Friday night, after the Good Friday service, Sarah and I watched a documentary about the evangelist Billy Graham. It recounted the famous crisis of faith that Graham underwent while preaching under the auspices of Youth for Christ. He was a modern man living in a modern world. How could he believe in the Bible? 

Ultimately, Graham knelt down in a woods with an open Bible and told God, “I don’t understand everything in this book. But, I ask You to help me to trust in it as Your Word, just as I trust in Jesus.” 

Graham learned what I have learned and relearned as a disciple of Jesus: If I am open to trusting in Jesus, He will empower me to trust in Him. 

If I will only bring my needy, sinful, mistake-riddled life to Him, He will breathe the new life of faith into me. The apostle Paul writes: “...no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, ‘Jesus be cursed,’ and no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:3).” 

The Holy Spirit wants to give you a deep, growing faith in the risen Jesus. Are you willing to receive Him by faith today and each day? That’s the question for us all in the face of Christ’s Easter surprise.

As many of you know, some forty years ago, God brought me out of implacable atheism to faith in Jesus Christ. It all started when I began to observe the faith in Christ I saw exemplified in the people of Ann's home church. None of them claimed to be perfect. But I saw in them a peace in the face of difficulty and a love in the midst of a crazy world that I needed to understand. 

As I studied the Bible and listened to the reflections on Christian faith of the people of Bethlehem Lutheran Church, I found myself being tugged toward Jesus. I began praying, even though I wasn't sure that the risen Jesus Who reveals the heart of God to the whole human race was there or real. I told Him that while I didn't yet believe, I was willing to believe. I don't know the exact hour or minute, but I do know that God heard that prayer. I fell in love with Jesus and I came to know that He wanted to save me from myself, my sins, my self-reliance. He made me see that going my own way--relying on own thoughts, my own will, my own heart--was, in the words of another song, "the highway to hell." He began to help me trust in the crucified and risen Jesus, "the way and the truth and the life," to receive forgiveness of my sins and for new life through Him. 

Faith in the risen Christ happens and is made stronger when God's grace meets our open minds, open wills, open hearts, whether as infants at the baptismal font or as needy sinners at the Communion altar. 

It happens when, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we gladly hear and learn the good news of new life through Jesus. It's not a matter of doing anything, any more than it was for the first Christians. It's a matter of doing nothing and letting God do it all!

The disciples were skeptical about all of that as the first Easter began. But at least one of the apostles though, was curious about what the women said about the empty tomb. Verse 12: “Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.”

The gospel lesson ends with Peter still not believing that Jesus was risen. That would come later. 

For me, knowing that the first disciples were skeptical about the resurrection is evidence that Jesus did rise. If Hollywood had written the gospels, all of the disciples would have been waiting for Jesus to emerge from His tomb and immediately believed in Jesus’ resurrection and, without doubt or evidence, begun to tell the world. 

But it took time for their faith to get to that point. 

Jesus had to show Himself to them. 

He had to teach them some more. 

He had to send His Holy Spirit after He had ascended to heaven to help them remember so that they, in turn, could tell us so that we can remember. 

The initial mystification of the first disciples on the first Easter has about it the whiff of authenticity, telling me that they came to believe in the risen Jesus against their own worldly judgment in the face of seeing the risen Jesus, eating with Him, hearing Him, talking with Him, touching Him. 

The honesty of the gospels in telling us that the first disciples didn't originally think that the resurrection was true or even possible, tells me that because these skeptics came around, I can believe in Easter too!

Everybody, it seems, knows the most famous words Jesus ever spoke: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).” 

When we attend to Christ and His Word, turning from sin and to Christ, and when we open ourselves to faith in Him, Christ builds that faith within us. We will live in the certainty that He is with us always, even now, and that one day, we will have the greatest surprise of all: Jesus will raise from the dead all who trust in Him for to spend eternity with Him. This is the great promise of Easter. Never forget it! Happy Easter, friends. Amen

*Although they had seen Jesus call several people back from the dead.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]



In The Language of God, Collins, director of the human project, talks about how his life in the science of genetics, led him to faith.



[In Mere Christianity, Lewis, a scholar and one-time atheist, explains the Christian faith.]

Easter: Embracing What the World Calls Crazy

[This was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio, during Easter worship services today.]

Luke 24:1-12
The message of Easter is one with which we absolutely must be careful. Here’s why: If we aren’t careful about how we hear and respond to the Easter proclamation, the message that God the Father so loved this world that He gave God the Son to die for our sin and rise to give us new, eternal lives, we might do crazy things.

Things like: doing for others without expecting anything in return; forgiving others as God forgives us in Christ; living voluntarily under the will of God and not under our own desires; following Christ and not following our hearts; risking being thought a fool for telling others that their lives can be changed forever if they trust in Christ of Easter--not in themselves, or their 401(k)s, or their looks, or their work ethic, or their supposed goodness. Our personal power, our money, our looks, work ethic, and earthly goodness are all things of this world that either die, fade, or give out. We will all be separated from them either in this life or when we draw our last earthly breaths.

Easter says that the God we meet in Jesus Christ has overcome death, and wants to share His victory with us, here, now.

In the eyes of a world that sees life on this earth as nothing more than an extended effort to make ourselves comfortable before we die, faith in the Jesus of Easter is a crazy thing. The risen Jesus, now enthroned in heaven, isn’t as tangible as a 70-inch HDTV, a well-appointed man cave, or a nice house.

Faith in the risen Jesus doesn’t dismiss any of those things. But it challenges us not to live our lives for the dead and dying stuff of this world. And it isn’t easy to live the life for the risen Christ we can’t see.

This world deems doing so as crazy. Hebrews 11:1, in the New Testament, teaches us: “...faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” For the Christian, faith is trust in a God we’ve never seen, faith in a resurrected Savior we’ve never seen.

Life with God through Christ is a free gift. But it isn’t an easy life! As one wise person has written, “It’s harder to believe than not to.”

But here’s how faith in Christ works: If you refuse to believe, you will never believe. If, on the other hand, you confess to God how hard you find it to believe in Christ, how hard it is to surrender to a Savior you’ve never seen, but that you want to believe, God will use the Word and the Sacraments (Holy Baptism and Holy Communion), to build faith within you.

God builds faith in the risen Jesus in the lives of those who are willing to believe.

Are you willing to believe?

Are you willing to trust in what the world counts crazy?

Sometimes our faith is tiny. But if we will keep listening to the words of new life, forgiveness, and call to surrender that comes from Jesus through the Bible, the words of other Christians about Jesus, and the Sacraments, faith will come to us and even sustain us in the darkest times of our lives. “I don’t know how I could have gotten through without Jesus to lean on,” a widow whose joy had returned to her several years after the death of her husband, even though her grief would never completely go away.

Luke’s account of the first Easter begins: “On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. ”

The women went to the tomb without faith. They loved Jesus. They revered Jesus. They missed Him. But for all their devotion to Jesus, all they expected to find on that first Easter Sunday was His battered, wounded corpse. They weren’t expecting their worlds to be turned upside down.

But then, something crazy happened to them!

Luke continues: “While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: “The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’” Then they remembered his words. When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others.”

The women could have thought, “This is crazy. We’d better keep this to ourselves.” At this point in Luke’s account of Easter, they’re just like you and me: They had never seen the risen Jesus. They had never known anyone who had risen from the dead. They had never previously met these two men in dazzling clothes. Their message was crazy talk!

But hearing again Jesus’ words of promise created faith within them.

Why is that? Because the Word of God and the Word of God about the resurrection of Jesus has power. It doesn’t matter if the person speaking it is a classmate, butcher, computer programmer, retiree, housewife, basketball star, preacher, or angel. When the simple truth about Jesus’ death and resurrection is shared, it can create faith in those who hear it. It can create faith in those willing to believe it.

It may require years of hearing and reading the Word about Jesus for a person to have faith, as it did in me. I was thick of head and hard of heart. It took time for the good news about the crucified and risen Jesus to penetrate and give me faith. Others are fortunate in that they hear the Word from their moms and dads as children and always have faith.

But whether in a short time or a long time, it's the Word of God that creates faith in Jesus Christ within us.

Romans 10:17 says: “...faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.”

Romans 1:16-17, says that the Gospel about Jesus “the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.’”

There’s nothing you and I can do to convince ourselves that Jesus rose from the dead and will give new and everlasting lives to all who believe in Him. Faith comes by hearing a Word you may not--like the woman on the first Easter--have expected or, like me for years, even wanted to hear. Your ability to hear it and believe it comes from the power of the Holy Spirit-propelled Word about Jesus, the good news.

When people come to faith in Christ or to the daily renewal of their faith that God gives to those who daily repent and entrust their lives to Jesus, they can’t explain it. They know that faith is a gift and are gratified to have it because they know that, as Scripture teaches, only those with faith in Christ live with God.

But like any gift, you can choose to open it up or push it away. Luke writes in our lesson starting at verse 10: “It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.”

The apostles should have believed, shouldn’t they?

They should have been open to the gift of faith.

After all, they knew Jesus’ promises. In Luke 9:22, among other places, Jesus had told them: “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”

But here were the apostles pushing away the gift of faith in the risen Jesus being preached to them.

This was a perilous moment for the apostles. They had to make what Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor and theologian executed by the Nazis in the waning days of World War II, called in his book, The Cost of Discipleship, “the decision.”

We have to make the same decision every day. Will we receive the gift of new life promised by Easter through surrender to Jesus Christ? Or will we take a pass?

How we decide will determine the quality of our lives in this world and whether we spend eternity in heaven with Christ or in hell. It’s as simple as that.

Fortunately though, you don’t have to work to believe in the risen Jesus. If you and I will not push Him away when He comes to us in His Word--whether through the Bible, in the fellowship of believers, in His call to repent for sin, in His call to receive forgiveness, or in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion--we can have life-changing, eternity-changing faith in Jesus Christ.

But, be warned: When we embrace the gift of faith in the risen Jesus, we dare not keep it to ourselves! When the women received the angels’ word and faith that Jesus had risen from death to give second chances and new life to all who believe, they ran back to tell all the other disciples. The the real test of whether our faith in Jesus is real or just a hobby on Easter Sundays comes in just this, whether we share the Word about the risen Jesus. As one writer asks, “Can we say that we really believe in the resurrection of the Lord if we aren't willing to tell others about it?”

Jesus is risen from the dead!

Turn from sin each day and entrust your life to Him.

He will give you life that begins with Him at your side in this dying world and life that lasts forever in the perfect eternal world to come. That’s the good news of Easter!

No matter how crazy it seems, don’t push it away.

Take it into your life every day.

Dare to believe.

Dare to ask for the power to believe that comes from God to those willing to believe in God in the flesh, Jesus Christ.

Tell others.

Then watch your faith grow.

Happy Easter, everyone!

Easter Faith

[This was shared during Easter worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, yesterday.]

Luke 24:1-12
Easter: When God in the flesh, Jesus of Nazareth, having been executed on a cross, though He was sinless and without fault, rose from the dead.

Strange things happen in the wills, minds, and hearts of people who realize that Christ accepted the punishment for sin that we deserve, then took back His life again in order to offer forgiveness of sin, everlasting life with God, and a purpose for living we could never manufacture through owning, knowing, controlling, or entertaining ourselves.

If people aren’t careful, in spite of the doubts every human being experiences, in spite of being unable to prove anything about Easter, in spite of wanting to keep charge of our own lives and not giving control to God, the message of Easter--the message that God the Father so loved this world that He gave God the Son so that all who believe in Him may not perish, but may have eternal life--makes people do crazy things.

Things like:

• giving as God has given to us,
• forgiving as God forgives us,
• living voluntarily under the will of God and not our own desires,
• telling others that their lives can be changed forever if they trust in Christ and not themselves, or their looks, or their 401(k)s, or their brains, or their brawn, or their work ethic.

Those are things of the world that either die, or give out, or from which you and I will be separated when we draw our last earthly breaths.

Easter says that the God we meet in Jesus Christ has overcome death, will never give out, and can be with us always.

In the eyes of a world turned in on itself, that sees life on this earth as nothing more than an extended effort to make ourselves comfortable before we die, faith in the Jesus of Easter is a crazy thing. The risen Jesus, now enthroned in heaven, isn’t as tangible as a 70-inch HDTV, a well-appointed man cave, or the illusion of the perfect life. Faith in the risen Jesus doesn’t dismiss any of those things. But it challenges us to live for different ends.

Hebrews 11:1, in the New Testament, teaches us: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

For the Christian of today, faith is trust in a God we’ve never seen, faith in a resurrected Savior we’ve never seen. Having faith isn’t easy. “It’s harder to believe than not to.”

But here’s how faith in Christ works: If you refuse to believe, you will never believe. But if you confess to God how hard you find it to believe in Christ, how hard it is to surrender to a Savior you’ve never seen, but that you want to believe, God will use the Word and the Sacraments (Holy Baptism and Holy Communion), to build faith within you.

Sometimes our faith is minuscule. But if we will keep listening to the words of new life, forgiveness, and call to surrender that comes from Jesus through the Bible, the words of other Christians about Jesus, and the Sacraments, faith will come to us and even sustain us in the darkest times of our lives. “I don’t know how I could have gotten through without Jesus to lean on,” a widow whose joy of life had returned to her several years after the death of her husband, even though her grief would never completely go away.

Luke’s account of the first Easter begins: “Now on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they, and certain other women with them, came to the tomb bringing spices which they had prepared. But they found the stone rolled away from the tomb. Then they went in and did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.”

The women went to the tomb without faith. They loved Jesus. They revered Him. But for all their devotion to Jesus, all they expected to find on that first Easter Sunday was His battered, wounded corpse. They had seen Him die. They had helped take His body to the tomb. They weren’t expecting their worlds to be turned upside down. But something crazy was about to happen to them!

Luke continues: “And it happened, as they were greatly perplexed about this, that behold, two men stood by them in shining garments [angels]. Then, as [the women] were afraid [understandably, since angels reflect the brightness and perfection of God Himself] and bowed their faces to the earth, [the angels] said to [the women], ‘Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen! Remember how He spoke to you when He was still alive in Galilee, saying, ‘The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.‘ And they remembered His words. [Here’s where it gets crazy.] Then they returned from the tomb and told all these things to the eleven [the eleven surviving apostles] and to all the rest [the hundreds of other disciples of Jesus grieving in Jerusalem].”

At this point in Luke’s account of Easter, the women at the tomb are just like you and me: They had never seen the risen Jesus. But hearing again Jesus’ words of promise created faith within them.

Listen: The Word of God has power.

It doesn’t matter if the person speaking it is a butcher, computer programmer, retiree, housewife, basketball star, preacher, or angel. When the simple truth about Jesus’ death and resurrection is shared, it can create faith.

It may require years of hearing and reading the Word about Jesus for a person to have faith. I was in this category. I was thick of head and hard of heart. It took time for the good news about the crucified and risen Jesus to penetrate and give me faith.

Others are fortunate in that they hear the Word from their moms and dads as children and always have faith. I remember the president of the seminary, Fred Meuser saying, "I never remember a time when I didn't believe." Fred's father was a pastor, his mother a woman of God, and they imparted faith to Fred, a faith he received.

But whether in a short time or a long time, it's the Word of God that creates faith in Jesus Christ within us. Romans 10:17 says: “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.”

Another part of the Bible, Romans 1:16-17, says that the Gospel about Jesus “is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith..For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, ‘The one who is righteous [the one who is right before God because their sins are forgiven and they know to go to God for forgiveness and direction]...The one who is righteous will live by faith.’”

There’s nothing you and I can do to convince ourselves that Jesus rose from the dead and will give new and everlasting lives to all who believe in Him. No recitation of convincing facts, not even the overwhelming evidence from the changed lives of once frightened disciples who willingly gave their lives to bear witness to Who Jesus was and what He has done.

Faith comes by hearing a Word you may not have expected or wanted to hear and your ability to hear it comes from the power of the Word about Jesus, what we call the Gospel, the good news.

When people come to faith in Christ or to the daily renewal of their faith that God gives to those who daily repent and daily entrust their lives to Jesus, they can’t  explain it. They know that faith is a gift and are gratified to have it because they know that only those with faith in Christ live with God.

Like anything that’s given to you, you can open it up or push it away. Luke writes in our lesson starting at verse 10: “It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them, who told these things to the apostles. And their words seemed like idle tales, and they did not believe them.”

The apostles should have believed, shouldn’t they? After all, they knew Jesus’ promises. In Luke 9:22, among other places, Jesus said: “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” But here were the apostles pushing the gift of faith in the risen Jesus preached by the women, away.

This was a perilous moment for the apostles. They had to make what Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor and theologian executed by the Nazis in the waning days of World War II, called “the decision.” We have to make the same decision every day. Bonhoeffer writes:

The time [on earth] is short. Eternity is long. [This life] is the time of decision. Those who are true to the word and confession [about the crucified and risen Jesus] on earth will find Jesus Christ standing by their side in the hour [when our lives are judged]. He will acknowledge them and come to their aid when the accuser [the devil] demands his rights [to take sinners with him into hell]. All the world will be called to witness as Jesus pronounces our name before his heavenly Father. If we have been true to Jesus in this life, he will be true to us in eternity. But if we have been ashamed of our Lord and of his name, he will likewise be ashamed of us and deny us. The final decision must be made while we are still on earth.

You don’t have to work to believe in the risen Jesus. But if you and I will not push Him away when He comes to us in His Word, the Bible, in the fellowship of believers, in His call to repent for sin, in His call to receive forgiveness, and in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, we can have life-changing faith in Jesus Christ.

We can know the peace that passes all understanding.

We can live knowing that while without Christ, we can do nothing of importance, we can do all things through Christ Who strengthens us.

We can know that Christ is with us to the close of the age.

We can live with the purpose that belongs to the children of God, who without faith in Jesus, were no people, but with faith in Jesus become God’s people, people who once lived apart from the mercy and power of Jesus in their lives, but now have received and live in that mercy and power.

We can know that our sins are forgiven and our names are written in the book of life! [See Luke 10:20; Revelation 13:8; 20:12]

But when we embrace the gift of faith in the risen Jesus, we dare not keep it to ourselves! When the women received the angels word and faith that Jesus is our everliving advocate, friend, and Savior had come to them, they ran back to tell all the others who had followed Jesus during His earthly ministry.

This is the real test of whether our faith in Jesus is real or just a hobby on Sunday mornings. Lutheran pastor Brian Stoffregen asks, “Can we say that we really believe in the resurrection of the Lord if we aren't willing to tell others about it?”

Jesus is risen from the dead!

Turn from sin each day and entrust your life to Him. He will give you life that begins with Him at your side in this dying world and life that lasts forever in the perfect eternal world to come.

That’s the good news of Easter!

Don’t push it away.

Take it into your life every day.

Dare to believe.

Dare to ask for the power to believe that comes from God only to believers in God in the flesh, Jesus Christ.

Tell others.

Then watch your faith grow!

How to Believe in Easter

[This was shared during the 10:15am worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]

Luke 24:1-12
There’s a joke about an expectant couple, anxious to confirm their suspicions about the gender of their baby. They arranged to have an ultrasound done at the doctor’s office. So, they arrived for the appointment, the pregnant mom got onto the table, and the doctor began the procedure. Suddenly, the doctor let out a, “Wow!” “What is it?,” the couple wondered, “Is it a boy?” “Well,” the doctor replied slowly, “the middle one is.”

Sometimes life surprises us and the only appropriate response from us, apart from fainting, is, “Wow!” Easter records the greatest event in human history. Jesus Christ, true God and true man, rose from the dead. And yet, in our daily lives, we manage somehow not to be amazed by it. How is it that you and I can “acquire the fire,” gaining or regaining our sense of wonder at the most wonderful thing that has ever happened?

Maybe the answer lies in going back to the original Easter and following what happened according to one of the Biblical writers on the first Easter Sunday. I want to do that by considering Luke’s telling of the Easter story, which we read as our Gospel lesson a moment ago, doing so from three different perspectives.

First, there is the perspective of the women who came to the tomb at sunrise that Sunday morning. They came to anoint Jesus’ body with spices, a task they had been unable to do before it had been buried. But the women got a surprise! The stone was rolled away. Jesus’ body was gone. Luke says, with incredible understatement that they were “perplexed.”

You and I would be perplexed, too! That's because we get used to certain set patterns in our lives, like dead people staying dead and tomorrow being pretty much the same as the day before.

Most people have low expectations of life. These four female disciples from Galilee would have been no different from most. As they went to the tomb, driven by grief and a sense of duty, Jesus’ often repeated promises were far from their minds.

In a fog, they wouldn't have been quick to remember promise like the one Jesus gave shortly after Peter had confessed Jesus was the Messiah. Speaking of Himself as the Son of Man, Jesus had said: “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”

Nor would they have likely remembered aother time, shortly before Jesus went to Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday. Then, he had said: “Everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be handed over to the Gentiles; and he will be mocked and insulted and spat upon. After they have flogged him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise again.”

None of the disciples had really paid much attention to words like these from Jesus. A dead man rising again? It didn’t fit in with their expectations of life.

But on Easter, God shouted to the world that He reserves the right to surprise us! Easter is worth a WOW!

The second perspective on the first Easter is that of the other disciples, the other followers of Jesus with whom the women at the tomb shared the news of Jesus’ resurrection that day. "Jesus is alive!" they said. The other disciples didn’t believe them. Why?

Some scholars think that the women were disbelieved because they were women. It may be. In those days, for example, a woman’s testimony was never deemed valid in a legal proceeding.

But I think that there’s a likelier reason the disciples didn’t believe the women. A few years ago, a prominent preacher told the true story of a friend and his son when the boy was small. The little guy had two heroes: Captain Kangaroo and Mister Rogers, back when both of those children’s show hosts were on TV. The father and son would sit and watch these two stars every day. Then it was announced that Mister Rogers was going to visit Captain Kangaroo’s show. The boy was so excited he could hardly stand it. Day in and day out, he would ask his father, “Is this the day? Is this the day?” Finally, the day came and father and son sat in front of the TV to watch this magic. Captain Kangaroo’s show began and after a few moments, Mister Rogers was introduced. The boy watched this for a few moments and then, left the room. Mystified, his dad found the boy in another part of the house. “What’s wrong?” the dad asked.” The son replied, “It’s just too good. It’s just too good!”

The women’s story of Jesus’ resurrection may have been dismissed because it simply seemed too good to be true. I know people today who refuse to trust that the resurrection Jesus promised actually did happen.

But if we consider Jesus’ track record, how, unlike us, He always fulfilled His promises and how His other predictions—predictions of His being arrested, betrayed, and crucified—all happened, maybe we should be open to the possibility that His resurrection victory over sin and death, a victory He promises to share with all who turn from sin and trust in Him, might be true too. Maybe Easter is one of those things too good not to be true!

The third perspective on the first Easter comes from Peter. Peter, you know sometimes gets a bad press because like us, he’s proud, impetuous, and prone to snap judgments.

But when Peter heard the women’s story of Jesus’ resurrection, he reacted differently from the other disciples. They sat their like bumps on a log or dismissed the lunacy of an idle tale about a dead Messiah come back to life.

Maybe Peter reacted differently because of his personal track record with Jesus. To Peter, on hearing the news the women brought from Jesus' tomb, memories would have come flooding back.

Maybe he remembered the early morning when he and his fishing crew returned from a night of futility when they’d been unable to catch any fish. They found the preacher Jesus, from landlocked Nazareth, waiting on the shore. He suggested that they put back out and lower the nets. Reading about that incident in the Bible, you can almost hear the smirk in Peter’s voice when he tells Jesus that, like generations of Galilean fishermen, they’d been out trolling the waters all night long. He knew what he was doing, Peter seemed to say. He was a professional fisherman. But then, he said, as if to prove Jesus wrong, he would go out again. They’d gone just a few feet from shore and lowered the nets. The nets became so full that the catch nearly sank the boat. Peter was overwhelmed. He collapsed before Jesus and begged the Lord to go away. Peter was aware in a sudden, dramatic way of how great the distance between him and the sinless Lord Jesus was.

Peter may have also remembered the events of just a few days before that first Easter Sunday. Jesus had told Peter that when the going got rough on the first Maundy Thursday and the world turned against Jesus, Peter would deny knowing Jesus three times. Peter told Jesus that would never happen. But it did.

Those and so many other memories may have incited Peter to not walk, but run, to the tomb and investigate for himself. There, he saw all the evidence he needed: the tomb empty and the linen burial cloths, left behind. Our Gospel lesson says that Peter went back home “amazed.”

Peter, I think, holds the key to our believing and our greeting the good news of Easter with a Wow! And not just on Easter Day, but every day of our lives.

For Easter to have meaning for us, it won’t be the result of our gaining knowledge through say, the reading of Scripture. (Although anyone who follows Jesus will want to read Scripture in order to know Him better!)

And the meaning of Easter won't stay with us because of emotions we experience. (Although the better we know Jesus, the more our emotions—like love and gratitude and even others like anger with injustice—will be roused.)

The wonder of Easter comes to us in another way, Peter’s way.

Years ago, a prominent psychologist told the story of being alone with his then-toddler son, Ryan, shortly after they’d moved into a developing neighborhood, with new houses being constructed all around. The psychologist was busy preparing dinner when he became aware of silence in the house. He called for Ryan...no answer. He looked all over the house and couldn’t find him. He then ran outside and saw, to his horror, that, some distance away, Ryan had crawled into the back of a large dump truck. How this little guy had climbed up there, the psychologist didn’t know. He wanted to avoid startling his son, so he approached him quietly. The closer he got to Ryan, the more he could hear Ryan talking to himself. At one point, Ryan decided he wanted to get out of the dump truck bed. So, backing up toward the edge of the truck, he began to probe with his feet for a place where he could land. Try as he might though, he couldn’t find it. The psychologist heard his son saying quietly, “Somebody help the boy.” Ryan finally decided that he would just back off the bed and see where he would land. He did so and fell...right into the waiting arms of his dad.

In the end, the power, the incredible blessing, the WOW! of Easter will be ours only after remembering Jesus’ track record as Peter did, we surrender and simply fall into Jesus’ waiting arms.

If you invest any credibility in the words and actions of Jesus, you can trust that Jesus died to destroy the power of sin and death over your life and that He gives new life to those who believe in Him. On this Easter Sunday, I invite you to, like the once disbelieving, world-weary disciples, put all your trust and all your hope in Jesus...today and every day! Jesus will catch you and you will believe that Easter is true!