Has the Name been put on you in the water? Then the claim has been made. It has not expired. The Lord is not waiting for you to perform your way back to him before he makes good on what he said when the water was poured.
The new commandment is a finished love. Christ made it on a cross. He gives it to you here in water and word and bread and wine. It is yours. The commandment and the gift are one. Faith and love are baked together like one loaf. Christ holds the one, and you hold the other, and there is no separating them. Christ went where you could not go, so that you could love as you have been loved.
This is the advantage. Not God near in the way you wanted. Better than that. The Spirit who convicts — your sin named and buried, Christ’s righteousness declared and given, the ruler’s judgment executed and delivered — doing his work here, in this service, for you.
The Father commanded the Son to suffer and enter His glory. The Son obeyed. The Father gave Him over for your trespasses and raised Him for your justification. Christ was raised by the Father, and that resurrection is the Father’s seal on every word the Son ever spoke. The empty tomb says: this Word is true. This commandment is life. The grave could not hold the One who carried the Father’s commandment, and the grave will not hold those to whom He has spoken it.
Two kinds of time run through this Gospel. Chronos, which counts every loss and draws its conclusions. And kairos, which speaks the word of the risen Christ into the middle of those losses and names them for what they are: labor pains, not graves.
The Bridegroom gives you new wineskins. He gave them to you at the font, where He drowned the old garment and clothed you in His own. The robe you wear before God is His obedience, His death, His resurrection. He does not repair what you bring. He replaces it. This is the grace that cannot be patched onto anything — it must be received whole, given whole, or it is lost.
The hireling runs. That is the only fact Jesus gives you about him. He sees the wolf coming, and he runs. The sheep scatter, the wolf takes what it wants, and the hireling is already down the road. Jesus does not tell you the hireling’s reasons. He does not need to. The man ran. That is his whole character, stated in a single act. Set that figure next to the Good Shepherd, and you have the entirety of the Gospel for this Sunday: He stayed.
You want joy without the terror of standing before the God who raises the dead. Or you settle for dread with no hope of mercy. The women leave the tomb with both, and Matthew does not apologize. He tells you: this is what the resurrection does. It gives you fear and joy together, because the One you meet at the empty tomb is both Judge and Savior, both Holy God and your Brother.
Faith is born from the breath of God. The pneuma of Christ fills us. We live. We believe. We are blessed, because we have not seen and yet we have believed. The Spirit has breathed. The word has raised us. We stand. We confess. We live in His name.
The risen Christ opens what we cannot. Christ opens Scripture. He opens understanding. He opens His hands and His feet to show the wounds. He opens His mouth to eat broiled fish. Through all this opening—this unveiling, this unlocking—He opens heaven itself and seats us there with Him. We cannot open our own eyes to see Him. We cannot unlock the meaning of Scripture on our own. We cannot break down the door that separates earth from glory. The risen Lamb who was slain has won the keys, and He opens what no man can shut.
