The Weekly Perspective
by Burke Shade, Assistant Pastor
You’ve probably heard it said that “every Sunday is Easter,” or “Every Sunday is Resurrection Sunday,” usually to stress the ongoing blessing of Easter, so as not to limit it to one day a year. And they are correct, of course, because each week we eat the Lord’s Supper and we are confronted with the fact that He is not with us physically, but in heaven at His Father’s right hand. He is the Resurrected Lord. He is absent in body but present to us and in us by His Spirit.
But they are also correct that each Sunday is a resurrection day because as we proceed through the liturgy, every Sunday we are cleansed from our sins by the death of Christ being applied to us once again in the Confession of Sins. We confess our sins which He died and covered with His blood. Our sins killed Him, but when His blood is sprinkled upon us, it shows the Father that a sacrifice has been made, and that our sins are removed in and by His holy blood, and that we are in Christ.
To be cleansed, therefore, is to undergo a resurrection. This is the meaning of the cleansing rituals in Leviticus 11-15, and other places. You’re dead because of touching unclean animals or because you are a walking dead man with leprosy, where your skin has turned to dirt, cursed ground, symbolic of your dead and evil heart issuing forth visibly. But when sprinkled by the blood of the sacrifice, and washed by the blood and/or water, you are made alive, resurrected, and can now go live in the camp of the holy saints. You are raised to new life!
That happens to us every Sunday, as we confess our sins but also Christ’s death and His resurrection for us. As we hear His word and eat His body and blood, we are united to Him in His resurrection. His life becomes ours!