Resurrection Day, April 9th, Year of Our +
Lord 2023
Our Savior’s and Our Redeemer Lutheran Churches
Hill
City and Custer, SD
God Shapes His Story, for You!
Christ is Risen! (He is Risen Indeed, Alleluia!)
much to you this morning. Perhaps like the women at the Tomb, you don’t know what to think about Jesus dying and rising.
God knows that we don’t all gravitate to the same kinds of stories and ways of telling them. And so, in His great love, God blesses us with a remarkable array of different versions of the same Story. He uses different modes and metaphors to communicate the same Good News, about salvation for sinners in Christ Jesus, crucified and resurrected. The Holy Spirit keeps using them all, searching for the one that will resonate in your heart.
Are you a fighter? Do you like salvation described as a victory over a hated enemy? In our Introit, our entrance psalm that comes from the book of Exodus, we heard part of the battle victory song of Moses, sung as the Israelites stood on the winning side of the Red Sea, looking out over the drowned army of Pharaoh, horse and rider buried beneath the waves. God set a trap for the enemy pursuing God’s people, working through Moses to open a dry path for His children to cross. When Pharaoh’s army had followed them between the walls of water, Christ our Valiant One lowered the boom. Down came the water, crushing the soldiers with their evil intentions, and God’s people rejoiced, safe on the far shore.
The first half of Exodus is all about God’s people Israel escaping slavery in Egypt. This story became a favorite for generations of Africans brought to the New World and enslaved. Ironically, most of them only learned of Moses, and Christ, after they were captured and brought to America. Here they learned to pray to Jesus, and longed for the same freedom in their lives that Israel was given at the Red Sea. Thanks be to God, our forebears ended this peculiar and horrible institution, long ago. Slavery does not plague our nation anymore.
Or does it?
Open slavery is gone, but are we threatened by other forms? What kinds?
Maybe slavery to fear? Or
money? Slavery to debt, or poverty? Or what about slavery to a bad relationship? Or to a substance? Or perhaps one could become enslaved to a
sense of entitlement and victimhood. Christ
in the Bible tackles all these angles, offering freedom from every
slave master.
Peter in our reading from Acts speaks of Jesus as the Healer, the great Physician. Maybe you aren’t a slave, but I know many of you are sick, living with pain, physical, mental and emotional. Is Jesus as your Healer the way you need to hear about salvation?
Paul in our Colossians reading presents us with a mystery, the Gospel promise that all the baptized have already died, dying and rising with Christ, in Baptism. Living in daily repentance and faith, your true life is hidden, up above, hidden in Christ, who is at God the Father’s right hand. Paul’s mystery in Colossians is a good balance to the promise of healing we heard from Peter. Because we all know, and the Bible also very clearly states that perfect physical, mental and emotional healing will not happen in this life. But perfect health is the promise of eternity, and by faith in Jesus you are already there. Right now, even though it’s not yet fully revealed, right now you are healed, in Christ Jesus.
These variations on the salvation story are just from our few readings today, but the Bible offers the faithful reader or listener the joy of discovering many more. Is your family life a bit of a mess? So far every family I’ve ever gotten to know struggles from some level of disfunction. So it is good to hear how God worked His salvation plan through Jacob and his four wives and twelve sons. Twelve selfish, stubborn, impetuous boys, full of strife and jealousy. Ten big brothers conspired to throw brash young Joseph into a pit, and then sell him into slavery. But what they meant for evil, God used for good, the ultimate rags to riches story, with Joseph ending up ruling over Egypt, just in time to save his family from starving. Along the way, the family finds forgiveness and reconciliation.
Your family is not worse than Jacob’s. And the same Lord of Jacob and Joseph is your Lord, Jesus Christ, who gives hope for families through blood-bought forgiveness.
Marriage and family are a huge theme in the Bible. God calls Himself the husband of Israel, and Christ is the self-sacrificing Bridegroom of His beloved Bride, the Church. She, which is to say we, are made spotless and beautiful by the love of the Bridegroom. And consider what love the Father has lavished upon us, that we should be called children of God. And so we are, through the adoption of Holy Baptism, the rebirth by water and the word.
Are you a closet royalist, always eager to hear the latest about the British ruling family? Well salvation is also a royal story, with a coronation and enthronement of the One Good King, who then turns to commoners like you and me and makes us co-heirs with Him of His Kingdom.
Feeling lost and lonely? The Good Shepherd will not quit searching until He finds every one of His precious flock.
For you entrepreneurs, Christ is the man who sells all he owns to buy the field with a treasure, and, to our great surprise, the treasure Christ seeks is us. Likewise, we are the pearl of great price, for which the merchant sold all he had, again a parable of Christ coming down from His heavenly throne to become a man and purchase our salvation, to redeem us from the evil one who by our nature owns us.
Are you a builder? Christ builds up His Church from living stones, by which He means you. You are constructed by Jesus into His Temple, built on the foundation of the Apostles, with straight, true and sturdy walls, a mighty fortress that cannot fall, because our Cornerstone is Christ Jesus Himself.
Do you love learning? Teachers and students will be taught by the Master the way of Wisdom and Truth, which gives you the mind of Christ.
Are you dizzy yet? Just wait, there’s more. Are you a person of ideas, a speculative soul? Consider Light and Darkness, Good and Evil, Truth and Lies, the wisdom of God’s foolishness overwhelming the foolish wisdom of men.
Do you love justice, law and order? God’s Law will be fulfilled, a promise which should make us rulebreakers pause and worry. But Good News, Christ is your judge, and your lawyer, and the one who has already paid your debt in full. So in Jesus, your verdict is “not guilty,” forever and ever, Amen.
The myriad ways God has told the story of His saving love is remarkable, and you are free to enjoy the one that suits you best. At the same time, all of these histories and metaphors and parables are connected to a concrete, historical event which is the linchpin of them all. Salvation is about life and death. To miss this is to miss everything. And it’s easy to overlook, because we live very comfortably most days. Do we really need salvation? Is it really a matter of life and death? Because I was about to grab the remote and a beer.
Well, there’ll be time enough for that later. But yes, first we should face life and death. We prefer to think of other things. But death, the ending of these lives that we love so much, doesn’t go away just because we don’t think about it. And death is proof of sin, proof of our departure from God and His ways. Sin and the death it leads us to are really bad. The only thing that could make sin and death worse would be if they were entirely irreversible, a part of our make-up that cannot be changed. And indeed, from our experience, from our perspective, from our strength and ability, our sinfulness is irreversible. And so, by our efforts, death and separation from God is inevitable.
But no. Not so for God. This is the good news of Easter, the life-giving surprise: God in Christ has removed the power of sin and the threat of death. The price God required has been paid, by the Son of God. The sentence of death and hell we deserve has been served, completed, and destroyed, by Jesus, on the Cross.
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Jesus the Valiant One has destroyed all your enemies, even the evil that lurks within you, by His battle on the Cross. He delivered that victory to you through your Baptism, a sea of living water in which evil is drowned, and from which the people of God emerge safely on the other side, a free people, redeemed to live for God.
The Good Shepherd has laid down His life for the sheep, and He has taken it up again. Now calls His own with the Voice that faith recognizes and follows.
The merchant seeking the pearl which is the Church has given His greatest treasure, His own life, so that He could purchase and win you.
The Sower continues to scatter the seed of His Word, and it has sprung up, even here in the Black Hills, to feed you for eternity, giving you new life, by making you a member of the Body of Christ.
Jesus continues to enliven our feasts with the best wine, His own blood, shed for you, for the forgiveness of sins, presented to you, here today, at His altar.
Christ is Risen! (He is risen indeed, Alleluia!) His death means you can face life and death without fear or guilt. His resurrection means you have new life, in Him, for today, and forevermore.
Alleluia, Praise the LORD! Amen.
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