Sermon for Easter Day (2024)

Alleluia. Alleluia. Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia.

We’ve talked at length this Lent about our journey through this life and how that journey is a pilgrimage, that we are all pilgrims on a road seeking our homeland, our end, our rest. We’ve talked at length about the confusions that arise on the way, how our hearts grab onto all kinds of stops on that road and think for a time that they are the end and thing that we are most truly desiring and longing for, but with them we are never satisfied and trudge on wearily.

We’ve talked too about the struggles we can sometimes have in accepting the truth that is Christ especially when it comes to trust, something that is hard to offer. None of us, I think it’s fair to say, have seen Jesus as the disciples saw him but we talk big about the trust we can place in Him and his love, yet far easier is it to place our trust in things we know and see in front of us – most often ourselves, as if to slide over into the drivers’ seat, shuffling God to the passenger side, and saying, “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.”

And we’ve talked about the dangers of minimizing what all of this means, the tendency we sometimes have to reduce it and think it even a shred less miraculous than it is, maybe because it defies what we think we know, or maybe because we feel that we’ve called for God in the past and have not been heard.

That time from Good Friday to early this morning was a time of doubt, of minimization and reduction; seeing his lifeless body come down from the cross the Disciples no doubt wrestled with their hearts thinking, “maybe he wasn’t who he said he was after all”. Maybe it was all a sham.

No doubt too there were many patting each others’ backs that day, many who were proud, many who were glad at dealing so harshly with this meddlesome man, Jesus. No doubt the darkness that filled Judas’ heart, the Deceiver, thought that he had won the day, thought that he could laugh in the face of God and His Son – ‘overcome this’ he might have said, when Judas first approached the temple.

And God the Father, reminiscent of a certain past Canadian Prime Minister, said, “Watch me.”

We’ll talk more next week about what it all means for us, but sometimes we might wonder how this event – the resurrection – fits into our lives. It’s good news, sure, but how? What does it mean for me? Why I am meant to be happy, especially if this resurrection already happened so long ago?

Well, it did happen those two millennia ago, but in a certain sense it is still happening every single day of our life because his rising from the dead is of eternal and universal significance, because the central proclamation of our faith – the banner that we fly today – the crow, that the high priests, and the crowds, and Pilate, and the soldiers, and the thief, and all those who persecuted Jesus must eat this day is this:

Christ is risen.

Jesus is alive.

Not just his memory.

Not just his teaching.

Not that he lived then.

But that he lives

Now.

And by faith not only do we share in his death, but we share in his resurrection and in this life.

This is the good news itself.

This is the good news that every single one of us who are broken, scarred, warring, betraying and betrayed, lamenting, grieving, sinning, weeping - needs to hear. This is the end of our pilgrimage, this is what we long for, what we desire, this is what we were created to celebrate and to know.

Darkness celebrated the day that he was laid in the tomb and for a time it seemed as though all that is rank and rotten in the world had won the day, gotten their fill. After all, as we’ve said all Lent, at its heart sin is nothing more than the human desire to conquer and to be God unto ourselves, and that day the world laid God, dead, in a tomb.

But that power was not to be destroyed, and that power of God once and for all conquered the darkness of this world, it conquered that hill that even today we try to conquer – death itself. It conquered it all by Jesus rising from the dead.

But that rankness and darkness is the same that lives in us and in our world, the same darkness we face and must walk through at various times in our lives, in ways big and small. Think about the worst – the darkest day – of your life, the darkest moment. Think of the feeling of captivity that that day or that moment has lorded over you, the weight of its chains that drag you down in despair, the memory that burns even to think about, the shame, anger, or grief that might accompany it.

Jesus broke the prison bars of death and rose from that tomb, not just to have victory over the darkness of sin and death in some general way, but he rose to have victory over your darkness and your death – the things that are in you which keep you captive, he rose to smash those chains that keep you bound, and to give you a new life.

And he’s not waiting.

We said all lent that the wilderness is not an accident, a speedbump on the way, but that our trials are part of the journey and it’s actually in the wilderness on the way to paradise that we find that paradise is already here…because Christ is already here, and we live in him and he in us.

One day all things will be brought back into him and made new, one day there will be a new heaven and a new earth, but it has already begun and is already in our midst. Just think of his work in the Gospels

Before she’s condemned he forgives the woman caught in adultery; think of what he does for the Samaritan woman at the well; he casts demons from the Gerasene demoniac, the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter, boy possessed, casts seven demons out of Mary Magdalene, he heals the woman with the issue of blood, heals the leper, heals the blind man, heals the paralytic, heals Simon-Peter’s mother in law, heals the man with the withered hand, heals the man with dropsy, he restores Malchus’ ear when it is cut off with the sword, he and resurrects his best friend Lazarus, Jairus’ daughter, the young man from Nain.

This all he did for them, but he died and rose from the grave so that he can do it for you.  

How silly we all feel when we remember this and look back on those times when we thought we could it ourselves.

The good news of Easter, of our faith – the good news you must carry with you out that door today, that must colour your tomorrow, your week, your month, that others need you to share with them because they are still enduring darkness without hope…is that the Lord is resurrecting you. He is lowering himself into your darkness to lift you from it.

The cross is the sign of his victory over our darkness, the sign it has no more power over us, and that through Him all is being restored, and all is being resurrected.

Alleluia. Alleluia. Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia.