Some things are really hard to believe.  This past week, for instance, the news reported that an autistic 17-year-old from Chicago, Alex Hermann, had picked a perfect bracket as the NCAA Men’s Tournament headed into the Sweet 16, a one in thirteen million long shot.  And, he picked Purdue to win it all.  I’ll be watching the Purdue v. Duke game Friday night with even greater interest now.

Holy Week is filled with things that are hard to believe – hard to even understand for that matter.  Why did God, who could have done anything and chosen anyone, elect to send His only Son, Jesus, to save us from our sins?  And why did Jesus have to die?  Why such a horrible death?  Resurrection – how does that happen?

I don’t have all the answers, nor can I begin to understand the ways of God who loves us so…but I believe.

Martin Luther said that “He who would preach the Gospel must go directly to preaching Christ’s resurrection.  He who does not preach the resurrection is no apostle, for this is the chief part of our faith…  The greatest importance attaches to this article of faith.  For were there no resurrection, we would have neither comfort nor hope, and everything else Christ did and suffered would be in vain.”

Luther admits the Resurrection is difficult to believe “because no other teaching so contradicts our experience as this one does.  For our eyes see that all the world is swept away by death and dies.  Further, that all human beings who have died and were buried, from the first to the last, are to be raised from death in one moment certainly sounds very strange, nay, seems impossible.  Reason cannot be reconciled to the teaching that rising from the dead is to come about so quickly...”

But then we don’t follow Jesus by our own reason…but by faith, a gift of the Holy Spirit.

God's blessings as we prepare to enter Holy Week.