Quasimodo Geniti Sermon 

The Second Sunday of Easter

"Stop being an unbeliever and believe!"

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

The resurrection is our Victory! The resurrection of Jesus proves He is exactly who He says He is: The Son of God. The resurrection proves that God accepted His Son's sacrifice on the cross for your sins and guilt. The resurrection proves that His blood and death was sufficient payment to forgive all your sins. The resurrection proves that Jesus is the Lord over sin and death and the devil. The resurrection proves that Jesus is the God who keeps His promises. The resurrection proves that all of your loved-ones who have gone on ahead into glory - you will see them again, they will rise from the dead just as Jesus promised. The resurrection proves that YOU will rise from the dead, just as Jesus promised. The Resurrection proves that the Holy Christian Faith is the one true faith, the only true religion, the only faith that can save. The resurrection proves that gathering here again and again around the Holy Word and Sacraments, which are the living presence of the living Christ among us now, is not futile but is the very power of God for eternal life for you. This is the resurrected Christ you hear, it is the living Jesus who is in the water of Baptism, it is the God who died but now lives who gives you His body and blood to eat. The resurrection is the heart and living soul of the Christian faith, without it there is no Christian faith, without it you are to be pitied most of all people, without it I am standing up here lying about God. The resurrection proves that God is the God who has power even over death and the grave and that you need not mourn as others do who have no hope. The resurrection proves that everything we have been given, every shred of hope we cling to at the grave, every word of divine encouragement we long to hear to strengthen our faith is true and has the power to do exactly what God says it will. The resurrection proves all of this.

 Easter Sunday Sermon

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No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ But he said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’” (Luke 16:30-31)

The rich man in hell was trying to convince Abraham to send poor Lazarus to warn his brothers. But they already had the Word of God, Moses and the prophets. If they would not believe the Word, why would they believe even if someone were to rise from the dead?

What do you suppose would happen if we had a funeral for someone and everyone in the community saw him dead and buried and a few days later we invited the town to come and see this man who was dead and is now alive again? I suspect people wouldn't believe it. It was some kind of a trick. He wasn't really dead, he was faking it, it was all staged. Someone stole the body.

It is not through seeing with the eyes that faith. It is through the Word of God. You do not believe that your body and the bodies of your loved ones will rise again on the last day, you do not even believe that the body of Jesus rose from the dead because you saw it. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe! It is only by hearing the Word that you believe. The first two verses in Paul's great resurrection chapter, 1 Cor 15, from which our epistle came today, is: “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.” Sounds a lot like Romans 10, doesn't it: “Faith comes by hearing and hearing through the Word of Christ.”