Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.”
NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, May 12, 2024
by Madison Johnston, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: We, as Christians, will always be able to find ourselves and center ourselves in Jesus’s resurrection.
If you’ve visited worship services for different denominations, you’ve probably picked up on some major liturgical, musical, and sacramental variations. Some people do full immersion baptisms; some people think a sprinkle will do. Some people insist on having wine at communion while others offer grape juice (if they serve communion at all). Some congregations open things up to popcorn prayer, inviting requests and contributions for everyone, while others rely on the pastor to lead all of the petitions. Some people follow the lectionary and others leave text selection up to the minister or the worship team. Some sermons go on for hours at a time while others wrap up in fewer than 10 minutes. The list goes on and on.
These things speak to differences in theological interpretations and undertones across the church universal—the kind of interpretations and undertones, in fact that Paul is addressing in this text. He is writing to a church that is trying to find itself. Trying to define itself. And what he’s reminding them of—what he is using in an attempt to center them—is the one thing that can never be changed up or played with. That is the fact that Jesus defeated death through death. That Jesus’s resurrection is unique in all of history, and that it brings with it new life for all of creation.
We are so used to talking about Jesus’s story that we run the risk of forgetting just how insane his death and resurrection really are; just how absurd the things we profess can sound. In this text, Paul says, “Listen! I will tell you a mystery!” And that’s exactly what the gospel is. Unthinkable. Unknowable. Evasive. Mysterious.
Perhaps this is the reminder we need this morning—that mystery is what connects all of us in a life of faith. That no other community in the entire world has what we have tying us together. That the church is not a social service or charity, but rather a living, breathing expression of a 2,000 year old miracle. How we go about showing our belief in Christ—how we sing about it and write about it and form behaviors around it—can look a lot of different ways. But today, we go back to the basics and profess the one, consistent truth we all share: the death and resurrection of Christ and the new life we all have because of it.
