chamonix protestant church

‘Christ, who died and rose again with us!’

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Sometimes we feel that God is far away. When we suffer, we may think that we are alone and that God does not understand us. Can God, that perfect, holy and almighty being, feel what we feel? Can he suffer with us? Can he put himself in a human being’s place? Can he join us in our suffering and our death? Does he understand our mental and physical suffering?
Dear sisters and brothers, if we read the accounts of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection in the Gospels, we must answer ‘yes’ to all these questions. Yes, in Jesus Christ, God has felt what we feel. Yes, in Jesus Christ, God has suffered as we do and has suffered with us. Yes, in Jesus Christ, God has put himself in the place of man.  And, yes, in Jesus Christ, God himself joins us even in death. He follows us right into the tomb.
Our places of suffering and failure, our hospitals and our graves, our loneliness and our sorrows, have not remained foreign to God, but have been visited by Him. Even these places, these moments, can be inhabited by God. Even in those moments, gestures and words of truth, love, forgiveness and life remain possible; even those moments can become, by God’s grace, moments of profound humanity. 

That, too, is the message of Easter: God, in Christ, comes to us where we are so that we may share in his loving presence. Nothing—neither death, nor life, nor the past, nor the future—can separate us from his love!
Yet, when Christ comes to us, he has a specific purpose: he comes to us in death and in our graves to bring us out of them! Christ is the Saviour; he will not leave us in death! That is the message of Easter. On Easter morning, his tomb was empty! Jesus Christ did not remain in the tomb, but he rose to life to live eternally with God.
Sometimes we do indeed walk through the valley of the shadow of death, but the message of Easter tells us that there is light on the horizon. Our God is deliverance and life. He has a future for us! We are all destined to live eternally with Him in love and peace. How this will come to pass, we do not know. Here, the right question is not ‘how’, but ‘why’! So, why? Because God loves us! And He wants to live with us; He wants to share His existence and His Life with us!And even if we feel unworthy, this promise of Life is for us! Thanks to the risen Christ, death has been conquered. Thanks to the risen Christ, our death has been conquered and eternal life is promised to us; indeed, even more than that, if we believe in it right now, eternal life begins even now. And our lives will be transformed for the better!
I wish you a very happy Easter.

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Pastor Volker KRÖNERT