Dear Visitor,

The women, who came to anoint the Lord Jesus’ dead body at dawn on the first day of the week, did not expect His resurrection. The apostles and all the others who had followed Jesus did not expect His resurrection. They knew then what we know now. You can resuscitate someone for a very brief interval, but when you are dead, you are dead. The Lord Jesus was dead, executed by crucifixion, a terrible form of capital punishment the Romans had adapted from the Persians.

Beat someone’s back to a pulp, nail that man’s wrists to a cross, send a spike down through two Achilles tendons, and lift up on a cross until gravity prevents the abdomen from expanding. A person suffocates in a body weakened by exsanguination (bleeding out). Finally, Jesus’ dead body was pierced with a weapon and fluid from the pericardium (the sack around the heart) flowed out with blood. He was dead.

God’s beloved Son in human flesh was the Suffering Servant about which the prophet Isaiah wrote in chapters 52-53. He took the worst that sin and the old evil one could throw at Him, and Jesus died an innocent death for your sins, my sins, and those of the whole world. It was necessary for Jesus to do this as true God and true Man in order to buy back a world enslaved by sin and the devil and bound to die.

The Father raised His beloved Son from the dead (Luke 24:1-12). He is the first Man ever to experience the resurrected life, and all those who are baptized into His death and resurrection have the promise of the forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and salvation. Do you believe that? Are you, at least, curious?

When the women came from the empty tomb with angelic tidings of great joy, that Jesus the Living One was raised just as He had told them all in advance, the eleven and all the rest did not believe it. Why? Dead men don’t rise from the dead. Of that, they were certain. But the unexpected was now upon them.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! So, please join us for the next fifty days as we celebrate the unexpected. Because Christ is risen indeed, all those crucified and raised with Him in Baptism will also!

Thanks for stopping by!

Pastor Sam Zumwalt+
szumwalt@bellsouth.net