From the Pastor
What would you do if you weren’t afraid? Resurrect!
Easter 2010: Never Going to be the Same Again
A nurse, who recently drew my blood for some annual tests, was making small talk with me as my blood flowed into a vial. She asked my profession. “Lutheran Pastor,” I said.
She replied, “I just became a Lutheran a year ago, and I gotta tell you, I’m having problems with this whole Good Friday thing.” I asked why.
She said, “Easter was nothing more than chocolate bunnies and plastic eggs for my whole life. That was fine, but now there’s all this death attached to it. It’s never going to be the same. I’ve got to figure out how
to deal with Easter.”
She’s right. It’s never going to be the same for her again. Right now, she and an entire generation of un-churched people around this nation are coming to grips with a world that is never going to be the same again.
In the year now past, we have seen fortunes ruined, jobs and reputations lost, cities taken to rubble and tough realities built in their places. It’s been quite a year and resurrections don’t come easy when the future looks tough. But resurrection, both for Jesus and for us, is not achieved by God amid the flowery dreamscape of a perfect world. God raises Jesus when all seems lost, when hope is abandoned, and fear dominates the leaders of society. But at the end of the day on Good Friday, when the dead are buried and the mourners scatter to dark corners to grieve, there is a voice that whispers in the ears of humanity, “Now, what would you do if you weren’t afraid?” This is the voice of God calling to us from the grave of Jesus. Amid death and despair and grief it calls to us, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”
It’s a hard question to answer. We think we can answer it simply or glibly, but we cannot. The question begs an honest answer from us. What would we do if fear was gone from our lives? Each of us would offer a specific response, but the only answer for any of us is this: Resurrect!
The ‘Easter’ of Jesus is the answer to the question of ‘Good Friday.’ What would you do if you weren’t afraid? You would get up from your deathbed and live like you’ve never lived before. That’s what you’d do! You’d live like a new man or woman. You’d do what you left undone before. You’d right old wrongs. You’d love where you once hated. You’d become YOU!
As the angels said to the first witnesses on Easter morning, “Don’t be afraid. He’s risen.” It’s never going to be the same for you again.
Blessings!
Pastor David Folkerts
Easter 2010
Worship
Sunday: 8:00 a.m. and 9:30 a.m.
Sunday School
Held during the 9:30 a.m. worship service.
Kid’s Church
The first Sunday of each month
(no Sunday school).
Children stay with their parents
through the children’s message.
First Lutheran Church of Crystal
7708 - 62nd Avenue North
Brooklyn Park, MN 55428
(763) 537-4576 (phone)
(763) 537-0372 (fax)
