“He Is Risen, Indeed, Alleluia”

1040EZ, 1099, W-2: Most of us don't care much for this list. Every year it is the mission of the Internal Revenue Service to communicate with us and gather income tax. I think communicating that message would be an unpleasant job, because no one wants to hear it.

Isaiah 52, Psalm 23, John 3:16: We Christians care a great deal about this list, these communications from God. By the work of the Holy Spirit, these things were written that you and I “might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that by believing we might have eternal life.” Nothing else so important has ever been written! Nothing else in all of God's Creation is more worthy of repeating than this good news, this gospel of Jesus Christ.

That Christ has indeed risen from the dead, just as He said He would, is the constant theme and joyful refrain of the Church of all ages and places, because it is the seal of God that Jesus' work truly was finished and that the debt of sin throughout the world is paid in full. This gospel is the power of God for salvation, the very breath of life breathed into our hearts of clay which changes us from death to God's dear and eternal children. It is no wonder then that the resurrection is our mission message.

Where once God created the heavens and the earth, and all revolved around Him in perfect harmony, Adam's sin spun everything out of control; every turn brought our sinful race closer to death. Yet God mercifully stepped in when His Word came to Mary, when the power of the Holy Spirit overshadowed her, when the Son of God was born true Man and yet true God. And on that center cross of Calvary, Jesus' outstretched arms and wounded side stopped that great, spinning mass of condemnation. Three days later, He remade this globe of ours to revolve rightly around that singular moment in an empty tomb outside Jerusalem, when His divine life flung away death.

As the compass is guided by unseen magnetism, we are guided by invisible faith. It is the gracious gift of God, to point through time and space, beyond the horizons of sea and century to the pole of the cross, the empty tomb and the bright pavilion of heaven, where Jesus has returned while all things are brought beneath Him by His Father.

The apostles' sermons in the Book of Acts are all resurrection messages and mission communications, and God has entrusted the communication of the resurrection and eternal life to us Christians, as well. He has not given us worksheets, forms and schedules to plow through; His perfect requirements have been met by His Son on our behalf. The red ink of iniquity and transgression has been covered over with His blood.

The work has been finished. What could be a better expression of our gratitude to our Savior than to strain with every fiber of our being to make His Word, His love and His life known to all? That is our mission, not just on the high festivals of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost, but throughout all our earthly lives, in our synod, congregations, homes—in every place, at every turn of this terrestrial globe. This is our mission message: God has mercy toward all sinners and gives salvation to everyone who by God's grace believes the good news that Jesus is the Son of God, has risen from the dead, and lives and reigns to all eternity. This is most certainly true.

Phillip Lepak is pastor of Hope Lutheran Church in Portage, Ohio.