Pastor’s article April Grapevine

As I sit to write today, themes of death and resurrection are very much on my mind.  In the past number of months, we at St. Mark have had to deal with the death of several significant people in our lives and the life of this congregation.  We also continue to grieve with our Japanese brothers and sisters over the loss of lives, livelihood, and property that they have suffered.  It seems that every time we listen to the news, we are faced with yet another revolution, war, or calamity.  Sometimes all the loss seems too much to bear.

And although we grieve, we are reminded of the words in First Thessalonians 4:13 – 14, “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.  For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.”

Good Friday always leads to Easter.  And as much as we would prefer that the cross not be part of our story, we would have no story without it.  Jesus died. Death is part of the human condition.  But it is not the final answer.  It is the power of the resurrection, the promise of beauty from ashes,  that gives us hope amid all the travail we experience.

As Lutheran Christians, we are undergirded by Luther’s Theology of the Cross.  God does not wait until everything is going well for us or we are on the top of our game to come to us.  God is with us in our darkest hours.  God comes to us in our pain, our despair, our grief, our misunderstandings, our brokenness, our need.  We have in Jesus, one who is acquainted with sorrow and grief.  We have a God who weeps with us.

And we have a God who has destroyed the power of death and all those things that would keep us from life and freedom.  Yes, Jesus died.  Yes, God understands our condition.  But more importantly, Jesus rose again that we too might have life.

In Hebrews it says, “For the joy that was set before him, Jesus endured the cross.”  And what was that joy?  The assurance that out of death comes new life.  Grief is real.  When we experience loss on any level, we grieve.  But amid our grief, may the promise of the resurrection hold before us the gift of new life.

CHRIST IS RISEN!  ALLELUIA!