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            Pastor G. Michael Rose              

               Pastor vignette.JPG (28651 bytes)

             PASTOR'S MONTHLY WORDS OF WISDOM

April 2000

“He is risen! He is risen indeed!” 

Dear Redeemer Family: 

An informal survey of preachers shows that the sermon for Easter Day is widely regarded as the year’s most difficult to prepare. Why is that? In part, no doubt, it has to do with the awareness that for a number in the congregation, it will be one of the two times they’ll hear the gospel message all year. That awareness puts a great deal of weight on a few minutes of communication. But more likely it comes from the sense that the message of Easter is simply more than we know how to say.

An old story reports that an actor once commented to a preacher that the difference between them was that actors speak of things that are not real as if they were, and preachers speak of things that are real as if they were not. That is probably an unfair assessment, but it does point to the difficulty not only of preaching, but of speaking our faith in general, perhaps especially at Easter. The message of the resurrection, however firmly we may believe it, however real it may be to us, is extremely hard to communicate. It’s a lesson preachers learn early in their preaching careers. It’s easy to find illustrations of sin and images of sorrow. It’s even fairly simple to paint pictures of repentance and forgiveness. But resurrection and new life — those don’t come so easily.

The problem, of course, is that resurrection is quite simply outside of our human experience. It is impossible, illogical, and thus, virtually inexpressible. How then do we speak of it? What images can convey resurrection in a way that does justice to its reality?

The scriptural accounts of the events of Easter never try to explain anything. They simply state what happened, “that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:4). They offer no explanation, no apologetic use of experience. It is simply fact. And this is the foundation on which the faith of the apostles was built: on fact.

This fact, however, is of a remarkable sort. The risen Jesus appears within history, on ordinary days, in ordinary rooms where the disciples gathered to eat and to talk. Into this setting comes one who is human but is not limited by normal conditions of time and space. He eats fish for breakfast, but also enters rooms where doors are locked. He is just as always, but also completely different.

Can we speak of that which is and make it real? Only in a limited way. But limitations are the point of this season: our human inadequacies cannot limit the glory of God. The risen Christ did not abandon his human body, but rather glorified it. Any image we may use to speak of the resurrection will fail to do it justice. It is simply too great for us to communicate fully. But the paradox of the season is that even our poorest attempts can give some hint of the message of resurrection.

The crowning image of Easter is found there in the joining of human and divine, the promise that “this mortal body puts on immortality” (1 Cor. 15:54).  It is an image that looks to its fulfillment at the end of time but is also made real here and now. It says that human life has become infinitely valuable, because the fact is that the Lord is risen! Amen!

                                                                     Pastor Rose