Easter Sunday Devotion: He Lives

“Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen!” (Luke 24:5,6)

What would Good Friday be without Easter? What if Jesus had died and stayed dead?

For the disciples, life of a sort would have gone on. What choice would they have? Best not think too much about Judas. Best to pack their hopes away and brace themselves for grief’s hard stages.

Denial. Guilt. Sadness. Resignation. “It looks like we’re all we’ve got.”

The truth is, if Good Friday were the end, you would never have heard of Peter, James, or John, because you would never have heard of their rabbi and friend. Crucifixion was a horrific act of shaming calculated to erase a man outright, someone history needn’t bother to remember.

There is only one reason you know the name of Jesus at all.

Then again, what is Easter without Good Friday? A strange cultural fossil. A shapeless, fleeting optimism. A rumor rustles the leaves like the line in Harry Potter about “the boy who lived.” But here in the real world, you have to be okay with loving people and then losing them for good. Are you? Try to grab onto a few days you can call meaningful before things—and you—fall apart? That’s enough for you?

No, these two holiest of days belong together. There is no guilt in the world that Jesus’ sacrifice has not atoned. On this the church stands or falls. And there is nothing in you who believe that is so broken, wounded, sick, or wrong that his resurrection will not cure it. Nothing.

What does Easter Sunday mean? To paraphrase Martin Luther, Satan’s ambush failed. He blundered into Jesus’ “quiet strategy” of allowing death to claim a victim who did not deserve to die. Christ strangled the devil in his own body, drowned death in his blood, and erased sin with his suffering. Alleluia!

God has spoken a final word by his Son. His great sacrifice is accepted. Every word Jesus ever said and all he ever claimed to be is true. He has the unmatched credential. We have a new orientation for life and a hope to die for. No one misses out on a thing who owns the risen Lord.

After all, we are speaking of our own physical redemption, the redemption of the whole of our human existence. Bless the Lord Christ for the fish he ate in the presence of his disciples. What confronted their senses was the bodily resurrection of the once-dead. Bless Jesus for insisting Thomas touch and feel the one who stood before him, tangible and oh-so-real.

“Thomas, behold my side,” said he, “my hands, my feet, my body see; and doubt not, but believe in me.” (CW 456:6)

My Lord and my God! I unhinge my mind to take it all in. When death and Jesus met, it was death that was changed.

We have hope for these bodies of ours, these collapsing tents and fraying cords. My body in a coffin one day is not an irrelevance. Not “just a shell.” We banish the old gnostic ghost that would have God be the God of spirits alone. My body, having partaken in the sacramental life—I have felt the water and I have tasted the bread and wine—is a part of who I am and I will get it back one day. Restored, I will melt to his touch. These very eyes will see him. In your heart of hearts, you long for nothing less.

You will awaken in that heavenly country, that new Jerusalem descending from above, glowing as brides do. No death. No mourning. No crying. No pain. This is the furthest outpost of godly desire, that we shall be fully ourselves and have at last—wonderful to say it!—love without good-byes.

To think of Martin Luther, the grieving father, is to have the poignancy catch in your throat: “Everything I’ve tried to hold on to I have lost; but
everything I have commended to God I still have.” So, look up and bless the day they will be given back to us, all those we have loved who closed their eyes in faith.

Already now the world belongs to his royal sons and daughters as lords of all. It cannot compare to the glory we are waiting on, yet some beauty survives. In simple pleasures and satisfying work, good things still stream down from the Father of the heavenly lights. We let his earthly gifts be what they are without bitterness for what they are not. These are not ultimate things. Our orders of service keep telling us that we belong to another time and place. Our hope anchors elsewhere and is certain. Because Jesus lives.

We have the sign of Jonah and of every springtime we have known—this too would seem impossible until you’ve once lived one. We endure that dark Friday and call it good because we know how it all turns out. We pass through the terrors of the woods and step into a clearing bathed in light.

On a very special Sunday morning in old Jerusalem, the world woke up redeemed.

The historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection is overwhelming, but as to showcasing Christian apologetics on this day, less is more, I think. Perhaps
our pastors do better to fall back into the thing itself. It is the Word of God that reveals the reality of the living Lord Jesus to our innermost being. It is Christ who blesses all who don’t need to see in order to believe. His own Spirit is the breath in our defiant trumpeting and our Easter song. There is only one reason you’ve heard the name of the once-crucified Jesus.

He is “the one who lived.”

It was a strange and dreadful strife when life and death contended. The victory remained with life, the reign of death was ended. Holy Scripture plainly saith that death is swallowed up by death; disgraced, it lies defeated. Alleluia! (CW 439:4)

Prayer: Jesus, I commend all I have and all I love to you. Oh, gather up our dust. Breathe into our mortal remains. Wake us up from our mere sleep to see, “O Son of God, your glorious face.” Amen.

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