Monthly Message | April

Christ is risen! Alleluia! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

With Easter here (as of March 31), we can now officially bring back out the “Alleluia,” as we proclaim Jesus’s resurrection.

Easter Sunday is a day filled with such brightness and color and music and praising God for this incredible event of having Jesus conquer sin and death for us. The tomb where Jesus’s dead body had been placed in now empty! He is risen!

When we let those words and what they mean really sink in, it is even more amazing, I believe. It can be difficult to wrap our minds around what God did because of God’s love for the world. We are living more than two thousand years after it happened, and it is still amazing. We can imagine what Jesus’s disciples, those who had witnessed the risen Jesus, and those who had heard firsthand accounts must have felt. 

As our hearts become full, and joy is felt Easter morning, the question can arise of how to carry the message, the heart of the Easter event — Christ’s rising from the dead, conquering sin and death for us — with us beyond just one day. It is, after all, this event that defines us because Jesus has claimed us and saved us, and that goes with us wherever we go and whatever we do throughout our lives.

During this Easter season, the scripture readings that will be read and heard during worship on Sundays show what Jesus’s disciples and early followers of Jesus after the resurrection did and said after the empty tomb. The disciples offer examples of spreading and sharing the Good News of the resurrection with people.

That story, the Good News of Jesus, continues with each of us. The resurrection of Jesus wasn’t just an event for the people who were living at that time. The life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus is for the world and for all time, and we are witnesses to it today.

What each of us does, how each of us carries that with us in our everyday lives may be different — it was different two thousand years ago, too — but with the country and the world being so divided, we can find comfort, I believe, in the unifying message of the resurrection. The message of God’s mercy and love for the world that comes from and is shown in Jesus’s death and resurrection.

The fact that whenever we look in the mirror and see ourselves, whenever we see another person, whomever we are looking at during any moment, we see someone whom Jesus loves, whom Jesus died for, and for whom Jesus defeated sin and death for. We can say to ourselves and to others those powerful words that continue to change the world — Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Go in peace. Jesus loves you!

Pastor David