(Photo: The Garden Tomb in Jerusalem)
Easter Sunday, April 1, 2018
Christ is building.
And the gates of hell shall not prevail against you.
Death is the great inheritor of everything that exists. This is as far as death goes. Right by the abyss of the valley of death is the foundation of the church, the church that confesses Christ as its life. The church has eternal life precisely there where death is reaching out for it, and death is reaching out for it precisely because it has eternal life. The church that confesses is the eternal church, for Christ is its protector. Its eternity is not visible to this world. It is not subject to challenge by the world, though the waves wash up over it and sometimes it looks completely covered over and lost. But victory belongs to the church, because Christ its Lord is with it and has overcome the world of death. Don’t ask whether you can see victory but believe in the victory, for it is yours.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
-from The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Volume 1, pg. 86
