A Month of Sundays

Luther once said, “Anybody who believes in Jesus Christ has already come more than half-way through his own resurrection.” Luther did not mean that believing in Jesus was some kind of short-cut to the next life, or that some new spiritual vaccination would make a person immune to the jolts and collisions of life on earth. He simply meant that our years on earth have a context, a reference.

Our origins are clear enough; all of us have some idea of the circumstances within which we came into existence. We did not exist until our parents made life possible for us, by the creating power vested in them by God himself. But then, as we grew into an understanding of the wonder of life, we discovered that the details of our birth, incomplete as they might be, were infinitely more distinct than any concept of what would finally become of us as we grew: our thoughts…our feeling…our unique personhood.

Much of the world of our time is pre-occupied with the details of the earthly particulars of the life of Jesus, the specifics of his suffering, the ranking of his teaching amount the wisdom of our world, and so on. Few outside the Christian church take the measure of what is the cosmic magnificence of his presence on earth, his triumph over death. For them the mystery remains unattended. None dare speak of what all of life is for, because death has intimidated the strong and defeated reason.

But as we celebrate Christ Risen on that first Easter, astonishing his contemporaries, shocking those who did not recognize that the life-source from the beginning had asserted itself again in Jesus of Nazareth, and earth had been set free from its captivity to anxiety and fear of the future. Believing was for Luther living in the resurrections to the point of claiming it as his greatest blessing.

May is a wonderful month of Sundays celebrating the gift of eternal life won for us by Christ Jesus. How totally fitting that one of those Sundays be lifted up to honor our mothers, who brought us forth into the life of this world, making it, in the first place, possible for us to be participant in the blessings of all the endowment of the grace of God in Christ Jesus in this world, and also in the world to come.

Pastor Jansen