O33124

Easter

We are meeting at the table, not to remember a dead founder but to acknowledge a living Lord. Were it not for what astounded us at dawn, we would have no reason to be here much less to take up these markers of a death last Friday.

“Dead Messiah” would be a contradiction of terms because “Messiah abides forever” (John 12:34). It is not an abiding like our Lord’s contemporaries expected. He would not live and rule forever on earth; he would abide forever by first dying and resurrecting to rule forever at God’s right hand with the promise of sending his Spirit to abide with us till he returns.

So, these emblems are not so much reminders of his death as they are pictures of the death he overcame, combining message with proof of message: he is the Messiah plus his resurrection proves it.

We are carrying forward in our own time the part of “forever” that has taken place since Golgotha: he died for our sins and resurrected for our justification (Romans 4:25).