Easter Sermon

Easter 2009 Alleluia Christ is Risen!
Alleluia! Praise the Lord. Christ has risen from the dead. In Christ shall all be made alive.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is a unique event in human history. People had and still do make miraculous recoveries from disease and injury. But, no one before Christ and no one since Christ has transformed death back into life and walked the Earth telling people about it.
The resurrection is a unique event because Jesus was and is unique. In Jesus Christ God fully and irrevocably united divinity with humanity. Jesus was, and is, fully God and fully human. He was, and is, one person with two natures: human and divine.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the transformation of sin and death back into the original divine gift of holiness and life. The power of the resurrection is no more and no less than the power of the infinite and eternal love of God made flesh in Jesus Christ.
It was sin that killed Jesus. That sin is the word the Bible uses to describe the choice humanity has made to separate from God, other people and our own true nature. Separation produces a spirit of rebellion. Together, separation and rebellion isolate the soul and produce a deeply rooted spiritual pain we all live with and all seek to hide from. That pain creates distortions in our ability to reason, in our emotional responses to life, and in the way we make choices.
It does not take an act of blind faith to believe what the Bible teaches about the human condition. It only takes the ability to observe how much of the human experience is lost in conflict, broken by suffering and isolated in loneliness.
It does not even take a blind leap of faith to accept the central teaching of the Christian faith. That central teaching is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. All it takes is the ability to observe the response in the lives and actions of those who had abandoned Jesus at his arrest. Three days later their lives changed in an amazing and enduring way.
In fact, St. Paul records that some 500 people met and experienced the resurrected Living Lord Jesus Christ during the 40 days Jesus walked the earth after the resurrection. Each of those individuals experienced a reality so powerful and so profound that they described it as a new birth and a new life.
Those who went into the world telling the story of the resurrection never killed to establish a religion. They gave of themselves to invite people into a new relationship with God in the resurrected Living Lord Jesus Christ. Many of those eyewitnesses died for remaining faithful to what they had seen and heard and touched. It would have been so easy to allegorize the story. It would have been so easy to spiritualize the story. The scandal of the cross is the brutal and very public death of Jesus. The scandal of the resurrection is the personal and very physical reality of the risen Lord Jesus Christ.
If the apostles had wanted to create and craft a new religion for a new age they could have designed something less threatening or more powerful. They did neither. They simply told people what they had experienced.
With brutal self honesty they told the story of how they completely misunderstood who Jesus was. How in his moment of need they had all run away and hid in fear. How they had witnessed from afar, with the sole exception of Mary and John, the brutal death of the man who only brought love and compassion into the world. And how, with the exception of John, none of them was willing to believe Jesus had literally and physically risen from the dead until he appeared before them in person and invited them to touch him and feel his human flesh solid and alive.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is an historical event witnessed by some 500 different individuals. It was an event that changed their lives. It was an event they were so certain about beyond any reasonable doubt that they were willing to travel throughout the world to share their joy. And, it was a truth so profound that they were willing to die to remain faithful to their experience.
Every generation of humanity since the resurrection has an opportunity to hear the story and to experience the reality of the story. Christ died. Christ rose again. Christ lives now and forever. The apostles never invited people into a blind leap of faith but rather into the experience of a personal relationship with the resurrected Living Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus is a living reality today we can all experience in our lives as we ask him to come to us and to transform us by his steadfast holy love.
The Alleluia, Praise the Lord, we say today is a shout of praise for a living, present and transforming reality. That reality is the living Lord Jesus Christ. Alleluia. The Lord is real. Alleluia! The Lord is risen. Praise the Living Lord Jesus Christ.