Easter Sunday,March 23, 2008
29/03/08 13:54
Easter 2008
March 23, 2008
Arise: Why Easter Is Important to Us Today
I read recently about a church that formed a special committee to wake people up if they fell asleep during the Mass. On the very first Sunday that the new committee was to function, one of the members of the new committee marched down the main aisle of the church, and promptly woke up… the priest!
Anyone here ever fallen asleep in church? If there is one day of the church when we ought NOT fall asleep in church, it is today, Easter Sunday, the celebration of the resurrection of the Lord. This is the most important feast we celebrate each year as Christians. It’s the reason we are even here as Christians on this earth. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead – he has split human history in half, BC and AD, and nothing can ever be the same again. So are you awake? Good! We’re going to look at why Easter is important to us today.
I want to start with a story. Anyone here ever heard of Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin? He was one of the most powerful men on earth in the early 1900s, a leader in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 that brought communism to power in Russia. In 1930, he traveled from Moscow to Kiev to give speech on atheism. For an hour, he spoke eloquently against Christianity, and then, content that he had buried Christianity in the dust, he asked the crowd, “Are there any questions?” At first, there was deafening silence. No one moved. But then, one older man stood up, came forward and approached the microphone at the podium. Surveying the crowd, left and right, he shouted the ancient greeting of the Russian Orthodox Church: “Christ is Risen!” and the crowd, as if of one accord, rose to its feet and shouted in unison: “He is risen indeed!” So much of Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin and his atheism!
Why is Easter important to us today? I want to set the stage with a question from another famous Russian, the writer Leo Tolstoy. He wrote: “My question – that which at the age of 50 brought me to the verge of suicide – was the simplest of questions, lying in the soul of every man… a question without an answer to which one cannot live. It was: What will come of what I am doing today or tomorrow? What will come of my whole life? Why should I live, why wish for anything, or do anything? It can also we expressed thus: Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?”
This is a profound question. Does life have any meaning, or is it just an accident, a mere coincidence that we are here, a cosmic fluke? Without Easter, without the resurrection, life is meaningless, a cruel joke. But look at the answer to that question, proffered by Christian theologian N.T. Wright: “The message of the resurrection is that this world matters! That the injustices and pains of this present world must now be addressed with the news that healing, justice and love have won… If Easter means that Jesus Christ is only raised in a spiritual sense – [then] it is only about me, and finding a new dimension in my personal, spiritual life. But if Jesus Christ is truly risen from the dead, Christianity becomes good news for the whole world – news which warms our hearts precisely because it isn’t just about warming hearts. Easter means that in a world where injustice, violence and degradation are endemic, God is not prepared to tolerate such things – and that we will work and plan, with all the energy of God, to implement victory of Jesus over them all. Take away Easter and Karl Marx was probably right to accuse Christianity of ignoring problems of the material world. Take it away and Freud was probably right to say Christianity is wish fulfillment. Take it away and Nietzsche probably was right to say it was for wimps.”
I want to tell you two short stories. The first is about two men, sick in a hospital. One is bedridden; the other is more mobile, and has a bed near the window. The bedridden man, who cannot even lift himself out of the bed, asks his roommate near the window, “What’s it like outside?” His roommate describes trees, flowers, clouds, sunshine. But one day, the roommate dies and the bedridden man is moved to the bed next to the window. He looks out the window, anticipating trees, flowers, clouds, sunshine – but all he sees is a solid brick wall. Easter: Is it real, or is it a mere illusion, a brick wall? We who live today, 2000 years or so after the first Easter, must see with the eyes of faith that Easter is real, that even though life sometimes throws a brick wall at us, there is more beyond the brick wall, trees and flowers, clouds and sunshine, heaven itself, and God himself, awaiting us.
The second story is about a boy and his grandfather, out flying a kite. The kite, flying high, disappears into a cloud. The grandfather teasingly tells the boy: “I think a monster has swallowed your kite!” “No,” says the boy, “the kite is still there.” “How do you know – if you can’t see it?” asks the grandfather. The boy replies: “I know, because I can still feel its gentle tug.” That’s a lot like faith. We may not be able to see into the past with 20-20 spiritual vision, but we know that Easter and the Resurrection are real, because we still can feel and experience God’s gentle tug at our hearts and in our minds.
Why Believe? How do we know Easter is real? Where is the evidence that demands a verdict? First, we know about the resurrection because we have been told about it. We have witnesses. Now at first, that may sound trite. But think, for a moment. Much that we know is based on the testimony of witnesses. Examples: Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492; John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963; humans first walked on the moon in 1968. If the resurrection is not true, how do we explain the explosive growth of the church? Nonbelievers cannot simply deny the resurrection – they also must come up with a believable alternative to explain the birth of the church, and it’s explosive growth. Thirdly, how else to explain the zeal of the apostles? They died rather than deny Jesus and his resurrection. C.S. Lewis, the famous Christian writer from England, once said that lots of people might lie to make a lot of money, or for fame; but few people would persist in lying, if it would cost them their life. So why did the disciples of Jesus all die as martyrs, if Easter was just a myth, just a fairytale, something made up?
Saint Paul is one of our earliest witnesses. Just 15 years or so after the resurrection, he wrote these words in his First Letter to the Corinthians: Now let me remind you, dear brothers and sisters, of the Good News I preached to you before… It is this Good News that saves you if you firmly believe it… I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me—that Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, as the Scriptures said. He was seen by Peter and then by the twelve apostles. After that, he was seen by more than five hundred of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died by now. Then he was seen by James and later by all the apostles. Last of all, I saw him, too. (1 Corinthians 15:1-8, NLT)
My friends, the resurrection is NOT just another Lazarus resuscitation. Resurrection is a whole new plane of existence. The resurrection of Jesus was not just a dream or hallucination. It was not just a trick or illusion. It was not just a myth. The Bible tells us that it was the culmination of “salvation history” – century upon century upon century, building up to this climax, this momentous event. That’s why, in our Easter Vigil Mass at night, we hear the story of salvation history -- the creation; the fall of human beings into sin, Adam and Eve; God choosing a special people, Israel, because of the faithfulness of Abraham, who even was willing to sacrifice his son Isaac; the story of Moses, leading the Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt under the Pharaohs. But the long wait is for a reason – to await a Messiah, a savior, Jesus, the once-and-for-all sacrifice for sin on the cross.
Easter is a spiritual earthquake in human history. Our gospel today tells us: Suddenly there was a great earthquake, because an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and rolled aside the stone and sat on it. (Matthew 28:2, NLT)
How should we respond to this spiritual earthquake? Look at the response of the women who first stumbled upon the empty tomb. Then the angel spoke to the women.
“Don't be afraid!…That’s the first response we should make. Trust in God, no matter what. Lay your worries and your cares at his feet. Don’t cave in to fear, even though fear seems to be all around us in the modern world. Believe that God is in control, God is in charge – so we don’t have to be. Let go and let God.
Second: Come, see where his body was lying…It’s OK to have questions, curiosity, doubts. Search, investigate, dig for the truth. Is Easter real? On your handout is a box full of resources on the internet or in books. Study, read, search for the answers to your questions. If you are a parent with teenagers, they will ask lots of questions. The church web site is an excellent place to begin your investigation, and to learn how to answer the questions of your children.
Resources:
▪ Parish Internet, www.soledad-coachella.org (“Help Articles”)
▪ “The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism,” Timothy Keller
▪ “Evidence That Demands a Verdict,” Josh McDowell
▪ “The Case for the Resurrection: A Journalist Investigates the Evidence,” Lee
Strobel
▪ “The Case for Faith,” Lee Strobel
▪ “The Case for a Creator,” Lee Strobel
▪ “Who Moved the Stone?” Frank Morison
Third: …Go quickly and tell his disciples…Christianity is a participatory religion, not a spectator sport. Go, tell others about Jesus, put your faith into action, get involved, become a doer. One of the great errors of our day, especially in this country, is that many Catholics have become flabby, spiritually. They don’t feed and nourish their faith so that they can be strong, and they don’t transmit and share that faith with their children, or their neighbors, or their co-workers.
Finally: …Remember, I have told you.” (Matthew 28:5-7, NLT) It’s important that we stay connected and plugged in to other Christians, lest we stumble or get lost, spiritually. We need to persevere, to continue onward to the end. That’s why we need other Christians in our lives, to spur us on, to help and encourage us, to pick us up when we fall – and for us to do the same for them. And so, Jesus founded a family, a church, so that none of us is all alone, as a “lone ranger Christian.”
Many years ago, a Christian singer and preacher, W.E. Sanger, was diagnosed with throat cancer. Eventually, it would kill him. But before it did, he said: “It’s awful not having a voice to say HE IS RISEN! But it is worse to have a voice and not want to shout it.” – W.E. Sanger, Christian singer. The problem in our society today NOT that we don’t believe in the resurrection, though there are some people who don’t. The great spiritual problem of our society today is that we just don’t care – we’re too busy, we’re too apathetic to make God a priority in our lives. And so we drift, lost and blind, and we fail to discover God’s real plan and purpose for our life.
Trivia: This year, Easter is the earliest it will ever be in your lifetime. The date for Easter is always measured by a lunar calendar – the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the spring equinox. The last time it was this early in the year was in 1913, and the next time won’t be until 2160. So unless you are 95 years old, or unless you plan to live to 152 years old, this is the earliest it will ever be for you and for me. But why is the date of Easter set by the date of the spring equinox? The answer is simple: Spring reminds us of new life, and Easter is also about new life.
But there is a big difference between Easter and spring. Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopalian preacher and writer, argues that this timing for Easter is misleading. “Buy a daffodil bulb in the winter and it looks like nothing in your hands,” she writes, “a small onion, maybe, with its thin skin and scraggily roots. If you have any experience with bulbs, however, that does not bother you. You know all you have to do is wait. Come springtime it will escape the earth and explode with color, a yellow butterfly of a blossom shedding its cocoon. As miraculous as it is, it is completely natural. Resurrection, on the other hand, is completely unnatural. When a human being goes into the ground, that is that. You do not wait around for the person to reappear so you can pick up where you left off – not this side of the grave, anyway. You say goodbye. You pay your respects and you go on with your life as best you can, knowing that the only place springtime happens in a cemetery is on the graves, not in them.” …
About Easter, she goes on and writes: “To expect a sealed tomb and find one filled with angels, to hunt the past and discover the future, to seek a corpse and find the risen Lord – none of this is natural. Death is natural. Loss is natural. Grief is natural. But those stones have been rolled away this happy morning, to reveal the highly unnatural truth. By the light of this day, God has planted a seed of life in us that cannot be killed, and if we can remember that, then there is nothing we cannot do: move mountains, banish fear, love our enemies, change the world.”
Finally, she tells us: “The only thing we cannot do is hold on to him. He has asked us please not to do that, because he know that all in all we would rather keep him with us where we are than let him take us where he is going. Better we should let him hold on to us, perhaps. Better we should let him take us into the white hot presence of God, who is not behind us but ahead of us, every step of the way.”
Easter is not about some event far away in the dark, dim, distant past. It’s about resurrection and new life here and now, today, in us and through us. It’s about our future in eternity, but about our future in God, which has already begun, here and now, if we are followers of the Lord. Saint Paul, in our second reading today, tells us: Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits at God's right hand in the place of honor and power. Let heaven fill your thoughts. Do not think only about things down here on earth. For you died when Christ died, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. And when Christ, who is your real life, is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all his glory. (Colossians 3:1-4, NLT)
You see, Paul understood that resurrection is about the here and now – God’s new life in us, changing us and transforming us, if we are open to allowing Him to come into our lives and to start a relationship with Him. The challenge of Easter, for us all, is to embrace our own resurrection, which comes to us through Jesus Christ. Invite him into your heart and into your life. Don’t just ask for a cosmetic, superficial makeover – change a few bad habits here and there; but rather, ask God to completely change and transform you, giving you His new life and His new power. Our past is forgiven – so let it go. Here and now is what matters. Let the Lord be in charge of you’re here and now existence. And he will carry us also into a wonderful future, into eternity with Him in heaven.
Remember Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin? Not really, because his atheism and his communism were no match for the Risen Jesus. When the elderly Russian man approached that microphone and approached that podium, and said those three simple words of the Russian Orthodox Church, “Christ IS Risen!” – the crowd roared to life: “He is risen indeed!”
And so he is. Which is why we stay alert, awake, renewed, re-energized – because Jesus Christ is risen, is indeed alive and well – inside each of us, His followers. Amen, amen, alleluia, alleluia!
Watch with me this final, short video reflection… (from Bluefish TV, on the cross and resurrection)