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 Jesus is alive and we too live. It is not simply that we live now
and can experience “great” lives here on earth for we know that many
a Christian has surrendered their body to persecution and physical
death. It is not that a Christian can live triumphantly in Christ,
it is that a Christian is triumphantly certain.
Each person who is connected to Jesus Christ by virtue of faith can
speak and say, “Listen up, sin, death, devil, and everything that
attacks me in this life, you are all missing the mark. I am not one
of those people who are afraid of you. Christ Jesus my Lord has
abolished you and He has given his victory and triumph to me. It is
from his gift that I receive my name and I am called a Christian.
There is no other reason. My sin and my death hung about His neck on
Good Friday, but on the Day of Easter, they had completely
disappeared. His victory He has bestowed on me; that is why I do not
worry about you!”
 In resurrection faith, neither do we view the body as bad, or
wicked, or evil. The body is a gift of God, treated with dignity,
honor, and respect.
In the resurrection we shall have glorified bodies.
In resurrection faith we treat the deceased with honor.
Our funerals breathe not just heaven, but resurrection; not just a
soul dwelling in immortality, but a body rising at the second coming
of Jesus Christ.
We bring the body of a Christian to the Church, to pray and to sing,
to be the last confession of faith. A casket in the church proclaims
from a silent mouth, “I believe in the resurrection of the dead.” We
honorably carry our dead to the cemetery where they sleep in the
sure and certain confidence of the resurrection of all flesh knowing
that we together with them will rise on Judgment Day and that the
bodies will not be different bodies, although they will be
transfigured.
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As Christ rose bodily from the dead, so too will we rise bodily from
the dead. Our body will be a body just as it was created but it will
have a different appearance and use. This body will be strong and
perfect, sinless and fit for immortality. No more will defects
afflict us; no more will weakness assail us. We shall shine in the
reflected glory of God and we shall live forever. We shall put on
the coat called immortality that was sewn for us in the victory of
Jesus.
Then when you rise up from sleep early on Easter morning put
yourself in mind that your body one day will raise from the sleep of
the grave. When you put on the new dress, new tie, or new suit on
the kids, put yourself in mind that what is mortal shall put on
immortality. Know that an early service or new clothes is nothing
less than a foretaste, a confession of the faith proclaimed by
Christianity, we shall live forever in immortality, this body shall
rise and shall see a new day and a new glory for we are connected to
Christ and Christ gives to us freely out of what he has earned on
our behalf. Resurrection, that is the joy of Easter.
Zion Lutheran Church Missouri Synod
205 Pulaski Street, Lincoln
(217) 732-3946
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