Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 11, 2004

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! That is the Easter proclamation. It is the joyous good news that we celebrate today. It is our assurance of God’s unshakable love for us, that love from which not even death can separate us. Because God raised Jesus from the grave, we know that death does not have the last word. Because God raised Jesus from the grave we know that our sin is forgiven and that the only thing that separates us from God is our own stubbornness in continuing to believe that anything does. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! That is the best news there ever was or ever could be. It is the proclamation of faith that gives us strength, hope, courage, and joy, today and throughout our lives.

The proclamation Christ is risen! is in fact the proclamation that launched the Christian church nearly 2,000 years ago. You see, because Jesus rose from the grave, a small, charismatic, Jewish movement in a remote backwater of the Roman Empire did not die when Jesus was crucified. Because God raised Jesus from death, that little movement went on to conquer the Empire that had killed him. Because Christ rose from death, that little movement grew and grew and eventually was transformed into the faith we know today--numerically the largest religion in the world and, for those of us who follow it, the life-giving message of salvation, of God’s love that will not let us go no matter what.

Jesus’ death should have been the end, you know. Messianic movements led by charismatic leaders were common in first century Judea. They were an understandable reaction to the brutal oppression of the Jewish people by the Roman occupier. The leaders of those movements usually met a violent death at the hands of the authorities, as Jesus did. The Jesus movement, however, was different. In every other case, the movement died with its leader. The leader’s followers either were killed with him, or they scattered to await the next charismatic figure whom they could proclaim as Israel's deliverer.

Not so with the Jesus movement. True, when the authorities struck, his followers had scattered just like the followers of the other charismatic movements of the era. The Gospels make that perfectly clear. At best, a few of his women disciples--yes, he had women disciples--stayed with him to the end. Maybe the women were more faithful than the men; or maybe they just knew that the authorities cared so little about women that they would not bother to come after them as they so often came after the men. Either way, most of the Disciples scattered. Next week, in the Gospel reading from John, we will see them hiding behind locked doors fearing for their lives.

The thing about Jesus’ followers, however, is that they didn’t stay scattered, hiding out, and fearful. They reappeared. They reappeared almost immediately after Jesus’ execution. They reappeared telling the wildly improbably story that God had raised Jesus from death, that they had seen Jesus--alive! They had witnessed the Resurrected Christ--seen him, heard him, talked with him, even eaten with him. He had been dead, but now he was alive. It couldn’t happen, but it did. Dead is dead, after all; except with Jesus it wasn’t. Oh, he had been dead all right. Well and truly dead. The authorities had done their job and done it well. They knew how to kill a man. They had killed Jesus. They just hadn’t reckoned on God. They hadn’t reckoned on God saying "Oh no you don’t! Not with this one. Not with my Son. I’ll show you. I’ll show the whole world that I meant it when I sent you this one." So God raised Jesus. God brought life out of death in Jesus.

And God brought life out of death in the Jesus movement as well. A movement that should have been dead, that indeed for a couple of days was dead, was now miraculously, vibrantly, impossibly alive. The Resurrection of the Lord brought resurrection to his followers as well. God raised Jesus from the dead, and that incredible fact brought life to the dead places in which his followers found themselves in their own lives. They were terrified. They were disillusioned. They thought they had run headlong into a dead end that might very well cost them their lives. Their hopes were dashed. They were failures. Caesar had won, and they had lost. The most they could look forward to was a life on the run, always fearful that the murderous power of empire would one day catch up with them and take its revenge on them for having dared to challenge it’s claims to ultimate authority.

They were as good as dead; but because God raised Jesus from the grave all of a sudden they were more alive than they had ever been. They no longer feared the power of the empire and of the religious establishment. They no longer feared death itself. They had to tell the story of God’s amazing love shown in the Resurrection of the Lord, and tell it they did. They could tell it because Christ was risen, and we hear it and tell it today, because Christ is risen. They were dead, and now they were alive.

And it has been thus ever since. Today we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but resurrection isn't just something that happened to one man once upon a time a long time ago in a far away place. We Christians believe in resurrection, and that means, to me at least, that we believe not only in the Resurrection of the Lord. We believe that resurrection is possible for each and every one of us. It is God's will for us, and I don't mean just resurrection to eternal life in some other dimension of reality, although I mean that too. We believe the resurrection happens in this life, it is available to us here and now; and we know that precisely because God raised Jesus from the grave.

Think about it. I suspect that we have all had dead places in our lives, or, if we haven't, we certainly know people who have. By dead places I mean those times and places when, although we are physically alive, we are emotionally, psychically, and spiritually dead. We all have tragedy in our lives. We all experiences times of loss. We lose loved ones to death. We lose relationships to anger, impatience, and misunderstanding. We all experience physical illness, and many of us experience mental illness or know someone who does. And I know that God has the will and the power to bring us through those experiences and to raise us to new life if are just open to the possibility. I have had several such experiences. Those of you who are regulars here know these stories, so I won't elaborate. Let me just mention, for those of you who don't know me, that God brought me new life in Christian ministry when I had reached a truly dead place in my previous profession of lawyer. God has brought me new life with a new love after the devastation of the death of my wife of thirty years from cancer. I'm sure each of you could tell your own stories of resurrection in your lives and in the lives of your loved ones.

You see, when we think we've reached a dead end, when we're so depressed, ill, or grieving that we think life isn't worth living, it's precisely then that we can discover that our tombs, the tombs we construct for ourselves in response to hardships in our lives, are empty, just like Jesus' tomb was that first Easter morning. God doesn't want us dead, although we will all of course one day die. Until then, God's will for us is that we be fully, joyfully, outrageously alive. God can bring that life out of our dead places. God can give us resurrection now. I know it. I know it because I know that God showed us God's ultimate will for us in the resurrection of Jesus; and I know it because I have lived it in my own life; and I know it because I've seen it in the lives of others. And because I know the God raised Jesus, I know that God's will that we live and not die is not defeated even by death itself. In the Resurrection we know that even beyond death there is life, life for Jesus and for us.

Resurrection happened for Jesus on that first Easter day. And resurrection can happen for every one of us, in this life and beyond this life. Easter is about the Resurrection then; and it is about resurrection now. Thanks be to God. Amen.