Photo by Rodion Kutsaiev on Unsplash

“Behold, O My people, I will open your graves and cause you to come up from your graves.”

᛭ INI ᛭

Alleluia! ΙΗϹ Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

This is the Lord’s undying promise. “I will open your grave.” “I will cause you to come up from your grave.” It is His undying promise. It is an undying promise because He who made it died and is now risen from the dead. “I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore,” (Rev 1) says the LORD. “Death no longer has dominion over Him.” (Rom 6) (It never really did…) Risen from the dead, now all authority in heaven and on earth His is. Now He holds the keys of death and the grave. (Rev 1) And so,

THE LORD WILL RAISE YOU FROM YOUR GRAVE.

Even though that’s true, it’s easy to lose hope in “the valley of the shadow of death.” (Ps 23) It’s easy for our flesh to cry out, to cry out against the LORD: “Our bones are dry! Our hope is lost! We are cut off!” (Cut off from the Lord, from health, from life itself.)

“It is a good thing to sit quietly and wait for the salvation of the LORD.” (Lam 3) It is a simple thing, to sit and wait, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. It’s not easy getting sick, being so sick, being in pain. Gerri waited patiently for her Lord. She wanted His Sacrament as she did. She waited for the LORD to keep His promises even as He as already kept them. This is the way of faith.

Even with faith in the Lord, her flesh cried out like ours does too. Our sinful flesh makes it easy to say, “Our bones are dry! Our hope is lost! We are cut off!” But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord ΙΗϹ Christ! (Rom 8)

He gave the Holy Spirit to Gerri, in Holy Baptism, continued to pour Him into her heart through His Holy Word (like at Bible Study), and so her faith never wavered. He kept her as His own, and now He is hers forevermore. His promise to her—and to you and me, too—still stands: “I will raise you from your graves.” Yes, He will! THE LORD WILL RAISE YOU FROM YOR GRAVE.

The Lord’s promise about you is what He Himself already did FOR YOU. He Himself rose from the dead. He went to the cross on Good Friday to suffer in our place, to shed His blood as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Then He rose again on the Third Day. That is how Christ can make such a promise as “I will raise you from your graves.” It’s not only based on His almighty, eternal power, but it’s based upon His own saving work that He did FOR YOU. “Because I live, you shall live also,” (Jn 16) He says. He was “the first fruits of those who sleep.” (1-Cor 15)

Because Christ is risen, we too shall rise. And Baptism promises that that is personally yours. As you heard at the beginning of the service: “We were buried with Him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead, through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. For if we have been united with Him in death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His.” (Rom 6)

But it isn’t just Baptism that restates the Lord’s promise to RAISE YOU FROM YOR GRAVE. It is Communion also that gives this promise. As we heard Christ say, “Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will resurrect him on the Last Day.” Because the Lord’s Supper gives the forgiveness of sins, it strengthens our faith, and so also it sustains new life, and gives eternal salvation. For Christ’s body and blood, given and shed, and raised again, is “the medicine of immortality. It is the antidote to not die but rather live in ΙΗϹ Christ forever.”

Jim, it’s not easy to grieve. This comfort today makes it so “we do not grieve like others do who have no hope.” (1-Th 4) THE LORD WILL RAISE YOU FROM YOR GRAVE. Christ’s death, His resurrection, being baptized into His death and resurrection, and receiving His body and blood with faith, all offer the same promise: THE LORD WILL RAISE YOU FROM YOR GRAVE. There was a convergence of these things just on Good Friday. For then Christ gave her His body and blood for the last time, and now she enjoys the Lamb’s High feast forever!

The Lord keeps delivering this promise again and again: “I will raise you from your graves, O my people.” He does it during His Divine Service, for in the Divine Service we gather with the whole company of heaven, including those who’ve died in the faith and are now with the Lord, like Gerri. When we gather around the holy altar we “come…to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to ΙΗϹ the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.” His blood speaks better things like: “forgiveness of sins,” “has eternal life,” “will open your grave,” “will raise you from your grave.”

Yes, yes, He will! THE LORD WILL RAISE YOU FROM YOR GRAVE.

Alleluia! ΙΗϹ Christ is risen!\

He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

᛭ INI ᛭