You are invited!
As I was distributing Easter invitation postcards around the neighborhood yesterday, I came up to a house that had a German welcome sign, reading “Willkommen!” I thought it would be fun to translate the title of the postcard into handwritten German (Empty = Leer) but I didn’t have a pen with me, so the opportunity passed me by.
What did occur to me as I walked to the next house, was the double meaning of invitation in German. The noun Einladung simply means invitation. But it’s when you get to the verb that it gets interesting.
“Ich lade Dich ein” means, “I invite you.” But it also has another meaning, which is, “I will pay for you.” So, if I friend invites you out to coffee, and you try to pay, he might say, “Ich lade Dich ein” which colloquially means, “This is on me. I’ll pay.”
I considered how Easter really connotes both of those meanings. The cross is definitely an invitation, a call to relationship with a Heavenly Father who loves us and deeply desires connection with us. But it’s also that second meaning, as Jesus tells us, “This is on me. I’ll pay.”
Our sins were indeed on him. And the price was a price we owed, but He paid.
Perhaps the words of Charles Wesley say it best:
And can it be that I should gain
An interest in the Savior’s blood?
Died He for me, who caused His pain—
For me, who Him to death pursued?
Amazing love! How can it be,
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
Amazing love! How can it be,
This Easter, you are invited!