From the Pastor:
"This is My Witness to the Resurrection"
Make no mistake about it--
If He rose, if Jesus rose at all...
It was His body: the decomposition of His cells reversed; the molecules of His flesh reknit; the amino acids of His body rekindled.
If not so the church will fall.
The same hinged thumbs and toes, the same valued heart that pierced dies, withered and decayed and then regathered by His Father's might, given new strength.
Let us not mock God with metaphor, analogy, sidestepping transcendence.
It was not as flowers each soft spring recurrent.
It was not in the fuddled and muddled minds of confused disciples bewildered women.
It was and is for real, as real as our own flesh and blood.
For the stone at the tomb: no paper-mache, but real Judean limestone.
For the angel at the tomb: no apparition, but with real hair and weighty with real weight wearing a real robe of real linen spun on a real wooden loom.
We dare not make it less monstrous for our own convenience. This is no parable.
We dare not make it more "believable," acceptable.
We dare not give in to our senses of Lilly-like beauty.
Let us walk through the Door --
Lest we are awakened in that one unthinkable hour and are embarrassed by the miracle, crushed by rebuke, speechless but mumbling "If only I had known."
Make no mistake about it: He is risen, He is risen, indeed!
(Adapted from "SEVEN STANZAS AT EASTER" by John Updike.)
Pastor David M. Albertin
