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The Sunday of the Resurrection: Easter Day
Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
So what? What difference does it make? Who cares?
Who cares that a first-century carpenter in some backwater province of the ancient Roman Empire ran afoul of the ruling authorities and got Himself killed on a cross? What difference does it make that some Jewish preacher told a bunch of semi-literate fishermen and crooked tax collectors and blind, lame, maimed beggars and women of highly suspect reputations that His death would unfold in precise fulfillment of a divine plan established from before the foundations of the world were laid? And if, as the great last act of His plan, this humble hero, this weak warrior, this meek Messiah told His gullible followers that He would rise again from the dead … so what is that to me and to you?
Let me be clear: if Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead, then there is no more meaning to this day than a sugar rush from a basket full of jellybeans and a once-a-year consumption of mint jelly (which is, surely, more than enough for anybody). If Christ is not raised, we who gather in worship this day are fools — and worse. We are lost. We are separated from God, our Creator and our Father. We are cut off from the everlasting promises given to Abraham. We are bereft of the sustaining and sanctifying power of the Holy Ghost. We are dead in our sins. As another first-century Jew — a man called Saul of Tarsus, better known as Saint Paul the Apostle — says, if Christ is not raised, “we are of all men most miserable.”
“But,” Paul continues in his First Letter to the Corinthian Church, “now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept.” The first fruits – of an abundant harvest! For if Death is the tyrant ruling over all humankind and Sin is the sickness infecting every human heart, then Christ Jesus’ victory over those oppressors is great Good News for every human who has ever lived, or will ever live.
If Jesus of Nazareth was who He said He was — is who He says He is – then nothing else in our universe, nothing else in our world, nothing else in our lives, nothing else in our hearts can ever be the same. If Jesus of Nazareth did what the Scriptures say He did — is doing what the Scriptures say He is doing — then this day is the turning point of all time and space. If Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead — is even now risen from the dead — then this day is the hinge on which all human history bends. This day is the starting point of a new Creation that will not, at last, go down to dust and decay and Death, but will instead be united with God in eternity.
Perhaps, when you hear the great Easter acclamation, you wonder, “So what? Who cares? What difference does it make?” I pray that by the power of the Holy Spirit you might see and know and believe and trust that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead — and that the life you live hereafter and the death you will one day die might be transformed by this truth.
I pray that you will continue to grow in the knowledge and love of the Lord here at St. Martin’s Parish, where all that we are and all that we do flows from the announcement that the tomb was found empty that first Easter morning. I pray that this Easter you will find the grace to say, with all your heart: "The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!"
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