Easter Faith

Easter is a time of newness and life! Jesus rose victorious over sin and the grave! The great rally cry of the church is “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!” Notice the cry is Christ is risen, not was raised. The spell checker on my computer has never approved of or liked the sentence Christ is risen. When we speak of our risen Lord and Savior, we are speaking of something that doesn’t fit easily into the language and thought of our normal natural world. We are proclaiming a message that is bigger and grander than our systems and constructs. In Jesus Christ, the word became flesh, the outside came in, God moved into our neighborhood and the world was never the same again. Jesus was raised from the dead on that first Easter and he also is risen now and forever more. Our verbiage is inadequate when it comes to speaking about the one who is and was and who is to come all at the same time. I’m thinking that the message cannot be fully expressed or contained in words alone. God has never stopped being in the business of making words become flesh and blood reality. That Christ is risen is a message that is lived. The words, Christ is risen, become flesh and blood reality as we live in a community of faith in the world today, in the now. It is a message that language alone is incapable of fully expressing. It is a message that needs to be seen and experienced as well as heard.
Easter Sunday is a wonderful Sunday to invite someone to visit Westminster. The pancake breakfast, special music in worship, the egg hunt after worship all work together as a celebration of Jesus and who he is in our lives. People are more open to going to worship during holiday times and we can take advantage of that openness. I encourage everyone to invite someone to our Easter worship celebration. The number one reason someone visits a church is because someone they know and trust invites them. People find Jesus when they are found by others who cared enough to seek and search and invite. Someone once invited you to worship with them, now is a good time to pay that favor forward and invite someone to come to worship with you. I hope to see you and your friends in worship on Easter Sunday.