This hymn is nearly synonymous with Easter. It is sung in every church (worth its salt) on the morning of Easter Sunday. The title of its tune, so rousing with its many Alleluias, is simply EASTER HYMN. If you haven’t sung it, have you really celebrated Easter?
We Believe: We Look for the Resurrection of the Dead
Every Sunday, Christians rise to confess the faith once delivered: “We believe in one God… We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ… We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.” The Nicene Creed moves with a steady rhythm of affirmations, statements about what God has done in history, and what he has promised to…
We Believe: On the Third Day He Rose Again
As with much of the Nicene Creed, the words call our attention to more than an abstract philosophical proposition. In the Creed, we claim historical fact: the person of Jesus of Nazareth, who was truly killed, thoroughly dead, and really buried, rose again into newness of life at a specific time (on the third day…
Death, Be Not Proud: A Reading of John Donne’s Holy Sonnet X
“Death, Be not proud,” also known as Holy Sonnet X, is John Donne’s great poem in mockery of Death. Composed in 1609, the poem was published posthumously in 1633. It is fitting that Donne got the final word, laughing at Death from his grave. The power of the poem is its reversal of our experience….
Ecstasy at the Empty Tomb
The Empty Tomb All four gospels depict the women’s surprise when they find the empty tomb. However, the Gospel of Mark gives the most specific and intense description of the women’s emotional response: And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone,…
COVID–19 and the Death of Death
Death is on people’s minds these days, whether they want it to be or not. According to a recent report by White House science advisors, there is a chance that between 100,000 and 240,000 people will die because of the Coronavirus. In the face of such a staggering number of fatalities, what each of us…
Hopelessness on the Road to Emmaus
By John Rivenbark. John Rivenbark was a priest candidate who served for many years as a pastor, teacher, and Christian Formation director. He passed into the arms of Jesus on the eve of Ascension in 2018 after a long battle with cancer. John’s teaching and preaching had a profound affect on me, and on many…
He is Risen!!
The Driving Force “Why did Christianity arise, and why did it take the shape it did? The early Christians themselves reply: We exist because of Jesus’ resurrection…there is no evidence for a form of early Christianity in which the resurrection was not a central belief. Nor was this belief, as it were, bolted on to…
Why Resurrection?
Why is it so important to Christians that we profess faith in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ? Many aspects of that reality could be discussed, because the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are right there at the very heart of our faith. However, there is an aspect that most speaks to today’s world….
