Easter Day, April 8, 2006

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

The Lord is Risen Indeed, Alleluia!

This year, I moved into Easter through those three lessons we just heard. It’s a good way to get there. Those readings talk about the three things Easter is about, and we need to hear them all, all three, if we are going to grasp even the beginnings of a complete vision of this great festival. Let’s look at the lessons, starting with the Gospel, and with Mary.

All four Gospels say it was Mary Magdalene who saw it all, who was at the cross and saw Jesus die, who watched his body carried to the tomb and who came back to that same tomb and saw it empty. Mary saw it all, and what Mary saw makes very clear the first thing Easter is about. Easter is about Jesus. It is about a particular man who really lived and who really died, and who lived and died in a very particular way. Easter isn’t about Spring (especially today, and, by the way, do you realize that, for just about a majority of the world’s Christians, Easter comes in the Fall—they are south of the Equator), it isn’t about seeds coming to life or bunnies or eggs or the immortality of the soul or any such. It’s about Jesus of Nazareth who Mary saw die and whose dead body she watched and touched (and, believe me, folks back there knew dead, they knew it real well; it is kinda hard to miss), and that same person who was alive again—not by nature, but by the supreme action of God the Father.

That’s what Easter is about first and foremost—and we have to begin where Mary began, with the acute and overwhelming particular-ness of the resurrection. God didn’t raise just anybody; God hasn’t raised anybody since.

In raising Jesus, the Father is vindicating just exactly that specific way of living, and of dying, that was Jesus. There is nothing general or all-inclusive in the event of the resurrection (although there is in its consequences). It is about Jesus. That’s what the witness of Mary insists. That is the first thing about Easter that our lessons proclaim. Easter is, above all else, about this man, and no other. It is about Jesus.

That’s the first thing, the part Mary tells us. But if we stop there, all we have is history, and that’s not enough, not enough to matter much at all. So we also have that wonderful section from Paul’s letter to the Colossians, where he tells us the second thing Easter is about. Paul is talking about Easter, and about Baptism, (which is really the same thing as talking about Easter) and he tells the baptized in Colossae that they have died, and that they have been raised with Christ. There is an absolute reality here—through their baptism, the essence of what happened to Jesus has happened to them. (That’s why we try to have baptisms on Easter, to help us remember this).

But today Paul isn’t talking to the people in Colossae. Today Paul is talking to us. He is saying the second thing that Easter is about, the second part toward a complete vision. He is saying that Easter is about us. The past cannot contain it—and that particular life and death and resurrection that happened to one man, this is also ours, not by nature or by merit, but as a pure and gracious gift of God. We have died, we are raised with Christ. That’s who we are.

But this reality can just sit there, waiting—being true, but not making any difference. So, Paul gives us some Easter orders, "seek the things that are above". Set you mind on those things.

Now, this is not about becoming some kind of silly, scatterbrained, head in the clouds, super-pious sort of cartoon character. It’s about paying real and serious attention to the spiritual realities of our world, and of our lives.

It’s about reaching for, and embracing the reality of God’s love, and of God’s gift to you of the same new life he gave to Jesus. To set your mind on, to seek, the things that are above, this means to reach for the resurrection, not as an historical claim about somebody else, but as that reality which defines you, which says who you are first, before you are all the other things you also are. It is about taking it personally, and making it personal. "Seek the things that are above", Paul demands, "set your minds there", notice, and grab on to it as if it matters the most—because it does.

That’s the second thing Easter is about, it is about us.

But even that is not enough, and if we stop there we still haven’t gone near far enough, and our vision remains incomplete. So we hear the first reading, the one from Acts, which is part of a sermon by Peter. Now, Peter was a witness to the Resurrection, he knew that Easter was about Jesus, and, finally and after considerable pushing, he also discovered that it was about him, too. But for a while Peter was pretty much willing to stop there. The resurrection might be about Jesus and Peter, and it might even be about people who were like Jesus and Peter, but that was a far as it went.

Until now; until the time of this reading. Right before this, Peter has learned—again the hard way, (which was just about the only way Peter ever learned anything)—Peter has learned that the Gentiles, the despised others,

the ones outside the covenant and outside the promise and outside the limits of real human decency and discourse, these unclean gentiles are as much the objects of God’s love and concern as were Peter and the people who were like Peter and that Peter liked. So Peter, the faithful, observant, Jew who had never let anything unclean come close to him, is preaching to the gentiles, and telling them that the message sent to Israel was also the message for them, and that Jesus was for them just as much as Jesus was for anybody.

So Peter shows the third thing that Easter is about, if we are going to have a complete vision. First, Easter is about Jesus. Second, Easter is about us. Third, and just as centrally, Easter is about them. Easter is about the others, the ones on the outside, the ones who do not belong. Not just people who haven’t heard about it; but more especially the ones we would never consider telling—because they wouldn’t understand, or they wouldn’t fit in, or they just don’t belong. Easter is for them, also. And if we leave Easter with Jesus and do not make it our own, or if we make it our own and then keep it to ourselves, if we do any of those things then we have been unfaithful to this most glorious of feasts, and we have embraced an defective vision.

It’s all there in those three readings we heard. Easter is about Jesus, it is about you, and it is about them. In other words, Easter is about history, it is about faith, and it is about mission, all of those are needed, all of those, together, just begin to give us the whole picture.

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

The Lord is Risen Indeed, Alleluia!

The Lessons for today: Acts 10.34-43; Psalm 118.14-29; Colossians 3.1-4;  Luke 24.1-10

A Lectionary Guide to the Sunday Lessons

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Fr. Jim Liggett
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    This page last updated on April 08, 2007