Resurrection!

April 1, 2018 –– Easter Sunday

Acts 10:34a, 37–43 / from Psalm 118 / Colossians 3:1–4 / John 20:1–9

Resurrection!

Christ is risen! This has been the exultant cry of the Church since that first Easter Morning when the disciples’ sadness was turned to an incredible joy. Yet on this Easter Sunday there is a Culture of Death that surrounds us, threatening us and always wanting to turn our joy into fear and sadness. Pope Francis wrote an Easter meditation that asks: “Why is it that there is so much adversity….?” There is constant bad news on TV. We wake during the night with worries––how to pay the bills, a child who's struggling in school or with friends, the needs of aging parents, the boss that can never be satisfied, the marriage that's falling apart, the son or daughter fighting depression, a friend who has cancer…. These kinds of stresses feel heavy all the time. How does the Resurrection apply to the nitty-gritty?

The message of Easter is that the very Life of God breaks into our world––this world where there is little escape from fear and sadness. It seems there is no escape…. unless there is something bigger and stronger and longer lasting. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is God shouting into our word that death itself is not greater than the Life available to us in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The message of Christ is risen! gets distorted. Some think it cannot be true if the pain of all the evils in the world continue. Some hear the Church adding to the pain when it says “no” to many things the world offers to make us happy, not understanding that the Church only says “no” to the things that ultimately bring the pain and death we so much want to avoid.

“Life” as we know it in this world is not forever; the eternal Life of God that comes to us in the Resurrection of our Lord comes to us in this world, but it is the door and the bridge that takes us so much further.

Yet “this world” is always so close to us. How can we live in the reality of Paul’s words to the Colossians?! You were raised with Christ…. think of what is above, not of what is on earth.

Imagine a colony of grubs living on the bottom of a swamp. Every once in a while, one of these grubs is inclined to climb a leaf stem to the surface. Then he disappears above the surface and never returns. All the grubs wonder why this is so and what it must be like up there, so they counsel among themselves and agree that the next one who goes up will come back and tell the others. Not long after that, one of the grubs feels the urge and climbs that leaf stem and goes out above the surface onto a lily pad. And there in the warmth of the sun, he falls asleep. While he sleeps, the carapace of the tiny creature breaks open, and out of the inside of the grub comes a magnificent dragonfly with beautiful, wide, rainbow-hued, iridescent wings. And he spreads those wings and flies, soaring out over those waters. But then he remembers the commitment he has made to those behind, yet now he knows he cannot return. They would not recognize him in the first place, and beyond that, he could not live again in such a place. But one thought is his that takes away all the distress: they, too, shall climb the stem, and they, too, shall know the glory (Bruce Thielemann, Christus Imperator).

Christ is risen! Jesus has done what no grub could ever do. His Life has broken into our world, but it is so much more. Through Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, God gives us Resurrection Life. Live today in his Life, and believe––for yourself––in the glory that is to follow. Christ is risen!