The Building is Not the Church

Many church buildings will be empty Easter Sunday. No services, no communion service, no traditional Easter hymns, no beautiful lilies, no sermons glorifying the Resurrected Christ and calling all to seek Him. Just silence.

The most sacred day of the year will still arrive. Sunday is coming. The event in history it memorializes still happened. The Resurrected Christ will still be praised and honored by those who have received the Spirit of the Living God. He will be worshiped as the Living Sacrifice whose shed blood was the ONLY way God could redeem the world. But death and the grave could not withstand the Power of God that miraculously brought the Sacrifice back to life.  Jesus lives!

That same power will, upon Christ’s Return, gather all believers to Him — the dead in Christ will rise first, then those of us alive will meet them in the air, and in the blink of an eye we will all be changed.

¹⁶For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. ¹⁷After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. ¹⁸Therefore encourage one another with these words. (I Thessalonians 4)

⁵¹Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— ⁵²in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. ⁵³For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. ⁵⁴When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

⁵⁵“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”

⁵⁶The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. ⁵⁷But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

⁵⁸Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. (I Corinthians 15)

The Church – The Body of Christ, The Family of God – will still celebrate Resurrection Sunday because NOTHING can separate us from the Love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.