Christ Lutheran Church
Cleveland, Ohio
April 20, 2025
by: Rev. Dean Kavouras
The Resurrection Of Our Lord
Like A Tree With The Passage Of Time
“For like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be.” Isaiah 65:22
Sixty-five years before the birth of our Lord the great Roman poet Horace was born. He died at the tender age of 38 but his life was as productive as it was short. Besides being a soldier, a writer and a Roman Senator he was a poet par excellance. One of his most famous lines, simple yet profound, lives through the ages, and was adopted by the University of Toronto as its motto. Velut Arbor Aevo which means: “Like a tree with the passage of time.”
We don’t know for sure if Horace was familiar with the prophet Isaiah –he could have been. But his verse mimics today’s text from Isaiah 65:22
“For like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be.”
But what does this mean? And how does it apply to the Resurrection of the Son of God, the hinge on which all history turns?
Before the Lord “appeared, and the soul felt its worth,” the world was digging itself deeper and deeper into its own grave. History was rolling downhill at breakneck speed. Humanity was becoming more wicked. The cruelty of man more cruel. The future dimmer and dimmer – even as people congratulated themselves on their imagined progress. Either the LORD would have to bring about another Flood to wipe man off the face of the earth – which He promised he would never do again – or some equivalent thereof. Because fallen humanity was beyond repair but rather in need of redemption. Which God provided by the life, death and resurrection of His One and Only Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
St. Paul writes: “But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being made righteous by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. (Titus 3:4-7)
When Christ was raised from the dead all that was wrong was made right. The cosmic books were balanced. Satan was stripped of his power. Death lost its sting. The grave lost its victory. And all humanity could be born anew. Born from above by water and the Spirit, and new life was offered to all.
The case is exactly as Saint John writes in his first Epistle: “And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.” (1 John 5:11-13)
Now this Salvation was “like a tree with the passage of time.” It began as a seedling of a promise in the Garden when the LORD God sacrificed two animals, and used their skin to cover the shame of Adam and Woman – typifying our own covering by Christ the Lamb of God.
Over the years the promise grew taller, stronger, more stout and stolid through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the incomparable Moses, King David and countless prophets such as the verse from Isaiah today where the LORD God says, “ “For like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be.” Isaiah 65:22
And then after centuries of waiting the “shoot from the stump of Jesse,” our Lord Jesus Christ, entered the world and was nailed to the Tree of the Cross. The Tree of Life. “For us men and for our salvation.” And it was from THAT most royal tree of all, that Jesus announced with his dying breath: “Tetelestai.” A word which can mean “It is finished.” But perhaps more properly, “It is complete.” Which is to say that all of our God’s promises through the ages find the termination point here. In the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, and his glorious resurrection, beyond which there is nothing.
But what can be said of God’s unfolding Promise: a tree with the passage of time; can also be said of us. We who are the recipients of the Promise. We who reside inside of Jesus by baptism, and He in us by Holy Communion and by His Holy Spirit.
But we did not start our lives that way. Instead we were born as corrupt fruit from a corrupt tree – and lived corrupt lives. Each man his own god. Each man worshiping himself. Each man living by his own dictates with no regard for the Torah, the Instruction of our God.
But beginning with the gracious sacrament of Holy Baptism we grow like a “tree with the passage of time.” We become taller, thicker, stronger, greener, more majestic and more holy in Christ. And it is by this very celebration, the solemnities of our Lord’s resurrection, that we acquire more gladness, more joy, more peace, more confidence, more aplomb. More love for God, and genuine tenderness for one another. But the best summary of all these things is the words of St. Paul in Ephesians 3:14-21:
“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith–that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
“Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”