The Pastor’s Page
March Newsletter
I am certain that with all the snow and ice we’ve been hit with this winter (and having to be “locked down” on top of it) that everyone is really looking forward to spring. Every year as winter changes to spring, I get to thinking about how the changing of the seasons mirrors our human life cycle. In late fall, as winter approaches, the world around us starts to feel cold, gray, and bleak. Everything that was fresh and green withers and dies. It’s a yearly reminder that we must all someday face what poets have called the “autumn of our lives.” Like the leaves that change color in fall, as we get older our hair turns gray. Like the flowers that wrinkle and fade, our skin begins to wrinkle and our health begins to fade. And as we reach the winter of our lives, we see many of our friends and loved ones dying off like the flowers in winter. Like the changing of the seasons, as the winter of our lives approaches things sometimes feel cold, bleak, and dreary.
But there is one thing that always helps us to struggle through each and every winter, and that is the promise of spring. When we’re shoveling ourselves out after a snowstorm we like to remind ourselves that, “Spring is just around corner!” What gets us through the cold, harsh winter is the certainty that spring is coming; and with it, warmth, sunshine, beauty, and new life. And what can get us through the often bleak winter of our lives is God’s sure and certain promise that a bright and glorious new life is just around the corner for us. That is the great hope that Christ’s death and resurrection holds out to us.
But one of the great tragedies of the times in which we live is that our modern scientific worldview has taken away this hope for many people. Many people today think that belief in life after death is just mere wishful thinking and nothing more. But we moderns are certainly not the first skeptics. In his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul was writing to a group of early Christians who were having a hard time believing that there was really life after death. Here is what Paul said to them:
Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. . . . If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile . . . Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. [1 Cor. 15:12-19]
Very stark, but very true words. When you get right down to it, the single most important question we all face in life is this: Is the hope of eternal life just a wishful fantasy, or is it a genuine hope that we can cling to with all certainty in the winter of our lives? Paul addressed the doubts of the Corinthians by pointing to what was for him an absolute fact—Christ’s resurrection. Paul points to the huge number of witnesses who had seen the resurrected Christ: “He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time . . . then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles” [1 Cor. 15:5-7].
But what is most significant for Paul is not Christ’s resurrection in and of itself, but what its implications are for us. In his letter to the Romans, Paul put it this way: “For if we have been united with Christ in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” [Romans 6:5]. But, as Paul also honestly said to the skeptics in Corinth, if Christ did not rise from the dead, then there is no hope: “If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die’” [1 Cor. 15:32]. But if we believe that God raised Christ from the dead, then we can with all conviction say along with Paul: “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? . . . Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” [1 Cor. 15:54-57].
Looking with hope to a joyous Easter victory celebration over death and disease,
I am certain that with all the snow and ice we’ve been hit with this winter (and having to be “locked down” on top of it) that everyone is really looking forward to spring. Every year as winter changes to spring, I get to thinking about how the changing of the seasons mirrors our human life cycle. In late fall, as winter approaches, the world around us starts to feel cold, gray, and bleak. Everything that was fresh and green withers and dies. It’s a yearly reminder that we must all someday face what poets have called the “autumn of our lives.” Like the leaves that change color in fall, as we get older our hair turns gray. Like the flowers that wrinkle and fade, our skin begins to wrinkle and our health begins to fade. And as we reach the winter of our lives, we see many of our friends and loved ones dying off like the flowers in winter. Like the changing of the seasons, as the winter of our lives approaches things sometimes feel cold, bleak, and dreary.
But there is one thing that always helps us to struggle through each and every winter, and that is the promise of spring. When we’re shoveling ourselves out after a snowstorm we like to remind ourselves that, “Spring is just around corner!” What gets us through the cold, harsh winter is the certainty that spring is coming; and with it, warmth, sunshine, beauty, and new life. And what can get us through the often bleak winter of our lives is God’s sure and certain promise that a bright and glorious new life is just around the corner for us. That is the great hope that Christ’s death and resurrection holds out to us.
But one of the great tragedies of the times in which we live is that our modern scientific worldview has taken away this hope for many people. Many people today think that belief in life after death is just mere wishful thinking and nothing more. But we moderns are certainly not the first skeptics. In his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul was writing to a group of early Christians who were having a hard time believing that there was really life after death. Here is what Paul said to them:
Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. . . . If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile . . . Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. [1 Cor. 15:12-19]
Very stark, but very true words. When you get right down to it, the single most important question we all face in life is this: Is the hope of eternal life just a wishful fantasy, or is it a genuine hope that we can cling to with all certainty in the winter of our lives? Paul addressed the doubts of the Corinthians by pointing to what was for him an absolute fact—Christ’s resurrection. Paul points to the huge number of witnesses who had seen the resurrected Christ: “He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time . . . then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles” [1 Cor. 15:5-7].
But what is most significant for Paul is not Christ’s resurrection in and of itself, but what its implications are for us. In his letter to the Romans, Paul put it this way: “For if we have been united with Christ in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” [Romans 6:5]. But, as Paul also honestly said to the skeptics in Corinth, if Christ did not rise from the dead, then there is no hope: “If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die’” [1 Cor. 15:32]. But if we believe that God raised Christ from the dead, then we can with all conviction say along with Paul: “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? . . . Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” [1 Cor. 15:54-57].
Looking with hope to a joyous Easter victory celebration over death and disease,
