EKD Press Releases
EKD Council Chair Präses Nikolaus Schneider's Easter Message
"Christ's cross and resurrection free the mind for what really matters"
April 6, 2012
Easter offers us the opportunity to stop and to ask: What is really important? In what can I place my trust, on what can I base my existence? How does my indignation because people are wounded in their dignity and their freedom, because suffering and misery "cry out to heaven" matter? "Easter strengthens the focus on the distress of others and God's justice on this earth," says the chair of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) in this year's Easter message. "Christ's cross and resurrection free the mind for what really matters," Schneider asserted.
"The faith of Easter separates what is really important from what isn't. It tempers our agitation and incites us to focus on what is essential.
Through Jesus' life, death and resurrection, God opens a blessed - because accompanied by God - way to live and to die.
Easter is about everything - about both life and death. Christ's cross and resurrection show: God brings life. God came into the world; God became man and lived a human existence even unto death on the cross. The way of God leads through death to new life. Therefore, we celebrate Easter precisely because of all the Good Fridays in our world.
We are affected by no lack of scandals or by what we perceive as scandals, of cycles of indignation and hasty accusations. Our society appears to be volatile - with the slightest hint of scandal the flames of indignation leap up. In minutes the outrage spreads over social networks like wild fire. Too many people acquiesce without verification or further reflection. How refreshing then is the sensible voice of persons who, empowered though their Easter faith, are able to distinguish between the essential and the non-essential.
Easter is about the victory of life over death. Death, the radical, ultimate expression of human sinfulness, does not have the last word. Is any message more important?
This truth holds, even if we know the effects of sin are still to be seen everywhere in the world and in our lives. We cannot deem that to be acceptable by virtue of the fact that God through Christ has broken its absolute power. God emboldens and empowers us to strive for a more just world. Christians, through the promise, have been given indestructible life and thereby have become a "letter of Christ." (2 Cor 3:3)
Easter opens a realistic perspective on the world and on people. Humanity will not build paradise here and now. We therefore must not
hinge our expectations of salvation on humans, nor on politicians, not on celebrities, nor on sports stars - that would only be expecting far too much of them.
On Good Friday, God already saved the world and redeemed humanity. No other sacrifice, nor any other savior is needed."
Hanover, April 6, 2012
Press Office of the EKD#Silke Römhild