Easter Message 2021: Mercy and Grace

Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
—Hebrews 4:14-16

The WCRC is global communion. A worldwide koinonia. Called to communion – committed to justice. Since 2004, with the Accra Confession, we have transformed from understanding ourselves as a “confessional” body to being a global confessing body. We seek through the power of the Spirit to bring the confession that Jesus is Lord into the present tense. To confess the God of Life in a world fallen among thieves.

We approach Easter 2021 having suffered literally one year of a global pandemic and all the ravages of a world which was already afflicted by global life-threatening crises rooted in the overreach of empire, patriarchy, and neoliberal capitalism.

In the words of the Epistle to the Hebrews our time is a “a time of need.” A time of rising up in the face of affliction. In Jesus—as the one who represents all those whose bodies have been broken, whose lives have been destroyed, who has carried all the suffering and weaknesses of the displaced, marginalized, and oppressed—we find also our God. Revealed is the God who suffers with and has been tried and risen up against all the threats to life.

Because of Jesus who represents all those who have been destroyed and dispossessed we have a “high priest” that empowers us “to hold fast to our confession” that the power of resurrection in history is to be found among the broken and marginalized.

The writer of the letter is invoking a period when the Roman Emperor had destroyed the temple and the lives of many in Jerusalem and presented himself as a conquering king, and the son of God and the only High Priest.

The Epistle seeks to take away any sacred authority ascribed to oppressors and refocus our loyalty to those who represent the God of Life from and among those who have been broken and destroyed.

This Easter in our time of global need we are therefore indeed moving as a worldwide family to discern together and confess with boldness our witnessing to the presence of the mercy and grace brought so we find help in God of Life.

Please receive in the name of World Communion of Reformed Churches and our President Najla Kassab resurrection greetings of joy and hope as we, even in these times of trouble, “approach with boldness the throne of mercy and grace.”

—General Secretary Chris Ferguson