Jesus is Dead.

Those three words stopped me cold. Surely such an utterance had not been spoken in my classroom.

"What did you say?"

"I said Jesus is dead."

I had heard him correctly. Another student was in the middle of giving a presentation about the  traditions of his culture when this child chimed in upon hearing about the celebration of the birth of Jesus. I sat looking at this child on the floor next to me, heart pounding through my ribs.

Dead. He had said that Jesus was dead.

I've known for most of the school year that this child is not a Believer, but something about hearing those words come out of his mouth shocked me. He was so emphatic. So final. So confident.

These are the moments that I always think I'll have an eloquent, life-changing response to... until I'm actually in the face of it. I completely failed in this moment because as I sat there dumbfounded at this declaration of Christ's mortality, the only words that escaped my mouth were, "No. That's not true."

Not exactly an earth-shattering argument. And certainly not my finest moment on fulfilling that whole Great Commission thing...

But something about such a straightforward, blatant statement against the very foundation of my entire life shook me up just a bit. Yes, I know that this world is full of people who view Jesus as just another man with an interesting story in history, but sitting three feet away from a child I dearly love while he claims that the Messiah is dead made it all very real... and very personal.

I wish I could rewind and respond differently. I wish I could go back to that moment and tell him why his statement was not true, but I can't do those things any more than I can fast-forward to Thanksgiving break (which I would definitely do if I could pull it off). The good news is that he is quite literally a captive audience in my classroom each day, and I trust that the Lord will provide more opportunities to share truth with this boy... but I can't get those three words out of my head.

Jesus is dead.

As I type them now I realize that my student was only one word away from the truth, one word away from freedom. Jesus is dead? Not hardly.

Jesus was dead.

It's a subtle difference, but that one linking verb is the difference between joy and sorrow, my friends. Was is past tense, meaning a previous state of being. Jesus was dead, but four words spoken to Mary and Mary at the tomb in Matthew 28 show us that he did not stay that way: "He is not here."

Don't you know those were the most precious words those ladies ever heard? Those four words changed the is to a was, and shook the very foundations humanity. Sin could not beat him, death could not kill him, and the grave just simply could not keep him in.

So where do you stand? Jesus is dead? Or Jesus was dead? It might seem like a matter of semantics, an insignificant choice of words, but choose wisely. Is leaves us hopeless. Is becomes final. Is robs us of joy. But I have good news...

Was is eternal.