He Is Risen!

It is Easter Sunday. Our world is growing ever worse. In the Middle East, the most merciless of enemies kills our fellow Christians in unspeakable ways. Here in the United States, our merciless political enemies are driving Christians out of business in an anti-Christian pogrom unimaginable even twenty years ago. (I almost wrote "a legal pogrom" or "a non-violent pogrom," but the recent death threats that have closed a pizzeria whose owner gave the politically incorrect answer to an inquisitorial reporter make even those phrases inaccurate.)

Meanwhile, three hundred Republican pundits have joined to send an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to lie again about the Constitution and to spread this sort of slavery and oppression of conscience, and the approval of perversion, all across the country. Traitors and Judases, every one of them.

In case readers have wondered why I have not said more about these events, it is quite frankly because I do not know what to say. I am appalled and stunned by the speed with which evil is taking over our land and the world.

But is it not in this context that Easter needs to come? As a blogger, I have nothing to offer you today. Nothing but Eeyorish predictions about all the badness in the world. Nothing but head-shaking.

It is Jesus Christ who has everything to offer. It is true that what he offers us, in the first instance, is the opportunity to die for him. May we recognize the moment for sacrifice when it comes and not be like Peter who denied. But he also offers us eternal life. He says, "I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die."

This world will come to an end. What will matter for each of us as it does is how we, as Christians, lived, and how we, as Christians, died. Of course we should continue fighting the culture wars. But we should remember at all times that our help is in the name of the Lord who has made heaven and earth and that it is he who gives the victory. We don't know what is going to happen. Good. That's probably just about where God wants us to be. Then we will acknowledge our utter dependence on him. Then we will acknowledge that he is the Lord of history and the Lord of the future, as much when we are losing the war as when we are winning, as much when we cannot predict tomorrow as when we can. And as much when we have a clever spin to put on today's bad news as when we bloggers on the right side, we mini-pundits, do not know what to say.

The resurrection says that God has the last word. So be of good cheer!

He is risen indeed, Alleluia!