Calvin Synod Herald, 1993 (93. évfolyam, 2-6. szám)

1993-03-01 / 2. szám

CALVIN SYNOD HERALD- 3 -REFOMÁTUSOK LAPJA

OUR VICTORY THROUGH THE RISEN LORD

"When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on the immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory. O Death, where is thy victory? O Death, where is thy sting?

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks to God, who gives us victory through our Lord Jesus

Christ. Therefore, my brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord

your labor is not in vain” a connUmua is; s4-ss>

The event of Easter began when God broke into human history in Jesus of Nazareth, when the word became flesh. At this point God took the burden of our future upon himself by uniting forever in Christ In the drama of Holy Week light overcomes darkness, freedom shatters the chains of slavery, hope overcomes desolation, life, even life eternal becomes victorious over death. This is the great beauty and miracle of Easter: sin appears to have won as Christ shamefully dies on the Cross, but God turns the defeat into victory through the Resurrection. We did not win, but God became victorious through our risen Lord. This is the driving force of grace that enables us to rise above the perils of earthly life and become God's co-workers of making all things new.

We, the servants and co-workers of God, must constantly be reminded of this. When we stand at the casket of a child, when after painstaking sessions of counseling, the couple gets a divorce; after preaching carefully prepared sermons about the love of God and our mandate to reflect this love, there is a nasty fight at Consistory or in the kitchen, we tend to despair, lose hope and have a tendency to feel sorry for ourselves and declare that our labor is in vain. Our earthly life is full of tragedy. I wonder about the proclaimed triumph by St. Paul and his attitude, if he as their pastor, would have faced the Watkins family from Provo, Utah, when their 22 year-old son Brian, lying in a pool of blood was stabbed to death, when he came to defend his mother in a Manhattan subway. Yet his brother Todd, though hardly able to hold back his tears, declared "We don't know the answer, all we know is God lives!" (New York Times September 7, 1990, B4). Would you and I have the strength to make this declaration?

This is the uplifting miracle of faith and trust declared by our Lord at Holy Week: that God is not law, but love, that the essence of our God is not legalism, but grace, that we go to meet notan unattached judge but a loving father awaiting his children's homecoming. This is the victory of the risen Lord. I trust, this is the reason, why the eggs became the symbol of Easter. Can you imagine our ancestors in their caves looking at some eggs amongst lifeless stones and believing that there is no difference? Can you imagine the surprise upon their faces, as a little beak broke the eggshell and suddenly, from the dead-appearing white or brown shell, a soft, warm, tiny little new life jumped out. The egg must have appeared to them very much the same as the cross of Christ to you and to me. Dead, finished, immovable. Yet unexpectedly and suddenly there was new life. The shame of the cross becomes the glory of the empty tomb, through the redemptive power of God. What a design! Hence, the culmination of St. Paul's testimony of the Resurrection in I Corinthians 15. That's why we can also proclaim it with him: "Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." This is the very reason why we have to be steadfast and immovable, for in our Lord our work is not in vain. This is why we don't break down under any kind of pressure, because in the light of the Resurrection we are mandated to be set free to serve our living Lord, for the Easter faith is our assurance for the future and our promise of a permanent home with our Father.

Thus, my beloved brethren, be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for you and I are assured, by the Resurrection of our I-ord that our labor is not in vain. That death is not a final end or the exclamation mark at the end of the sentence, but only an entrance to the new life, prepared for us by our Father. Let us all prepare, work deliberately to celebrate our great feast of our homecoming. I greet you all, you homecoming Kings and Queens in the name of our victorious, risen Lord.

With the strength of the Resurrection faith I am yours in Christ's service, Zoltán D. Szucs

Your Bishop

"New Life"

ReMÍNÍSCENCE of A MÍNÍSTER'FatItER by A MÍNÍSTER-SON With A lifE-qUidiINq MESSAQE TO All

The Rev. Dr. Arthur Ludwig, former pastor of Indiana-Harbor, had his first heart attack on February 28, 1978, and the second on February 23,1981. After the first, his son, Koloman Karl, wrote:

I thanked God for this man who had fathered me for these many years, and asked Him, if at all possible, to give him just a few more years of life. A selfish prayer, but not just for myself, for many who depended on him.

Three days later he woke up, and three weeks later he was home again. The Lord had answered my prayer, and the prayer of many of his friends. He was soon healthy enough to go back to work, and resumed his life in the church and his community. Exactly three years later to the day I was again summoned to take my father to the hospital in the late evening, and God called him to eternal peace shortly after noon the next day. But those three years were a real miracle of God for each of us, as it was in those three years that each of us received a "new lease on life" as a gift of God.

"New Life" we often associate with religious thinking that is not fully relevant to "real life"; it is a "conversion" experience, or the result of "death and resurrection" which is still ahead of us. Yet now for us it was a true, living gift of God in our lives. For God had touched each of us, and in an instant had shown us that what we take for granted can disappear from one moment to the next; He showed us that what we consider to be permanent in our lives is only fleeting; He called us to take that final step to maturity, to recognize death as part of His plan for life. But perhaps the most important lesson was the lesson of Life itself; while we have this gift, we are to truly live.

My father assessed his new life, and made his decision; God had created him to truly live, He had called him to service in the world. The doctors suggested a diet, rest and retirement. My father tried to keep the diet, but felt that idleness would be worse than death; in his last three years he did more than most men his age do in ten years, and we all agreed with his choice. We, his children, discovered our new life in our father's recovery and determination. In fact, we discovered our father! No longer just as his children, though that was the very reason for the opening of our eyes. Now we came to know him as a person, full of wisdom and faith, and in this new understanding of who he was we came to better understand who we were, and who we could be. In those three years we came to know him as a friend, and in the process we matured as people and found New Life ourselves. Those three years weren't just given to him, they were given to all of us. God had indeed touched us with His Grace and Blessing.

At Easter time we focus on the death and resurrection of Christ, and the effect it had on the disciples. We hear that they discovered "newness of life" when they came to realize what had taken place, and in retrospect began to value Christ's life and teachings after His resurrection. Yet how many of us don't take to hear this lesson the disciples learned - that Christ’s very life should be our message. Rev. Koloman Karl Ludwig