This is a very big day in the church.
To put it in perspective: Without Easter, we would not be here. Without Easter, the church would not be – period.
Without Easter, we would never talk about Jesus – never utter his name. There would be no reason to.
This is not because Jesus didn’t do and say things during his life worthy of remembering. Quite the contrary. His teachings and his actions; the stories told of him in the gospels, from beginning to end, are precious gems to us. It’s just that, without Easter, all of those things would be forgotten.
Jesus would have been a footnote in history – one more Jew who died by crucifixion at the hand of the Roman Empire. One of thousands who died this way, whose names are not remembered.
Without Easter, death would have had the final word – for Jesus. For his disciples. For all who placed their hopes in him. For us as well.
The apostle Paul wrote, “If Christ had not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain.”
There is a lot riding on the doctrine of resurrection. It is not optional. It may not be discarded.
And why ever would we want to discard it? It is what eases the pain of death for us, the grief of losing a loved one; it is what gives us confidence that we will be united with them again in the life to come.
And yet, I know that, for some of you, there is a still small voice inside that persists in asking: is it really possible to believe such a thing? The resurrection of the dead?
Even on that first morning, his followers could not, at first, believe it. The stories we are told by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John show us the bewilderment, the skepticism and confusion among his disciples. An idle tale, they say. Not possible. Still, Peter runs to the tomb to see for himself and, finding it empty he walks away in amazement, or wonder. Not yet belief – but wonder.
Later, when they did encounter the risen Lord they failed to recognize him. Mary called him the gardener; the two disciples on the road to Emmaus called him a stranger. They were bewildered and confused.
And at times we are just as bewildered and confused as these first disciples were – both that he could have risen from the grave and that they could have failed to recognize their beloved lord. It just does not fit our understanding of and experience of the world – remember you are dust, we say, and to dust you shall return.
And still, we gather every Sunday in this place and proclaim Christ risen.
It is called the Paschal Mystery: Jesus walked toward his death as a sacrificial lamb, died and was buried. On the third day he rose again, the scriptures say, and we say whenever we recite the creed.
We cannot explain it. We cannot comprehend it. But there are ways we can know it, just as the first disciples came to know it.
They knew Christ was risen when they saw him, felt him, and heard him. When he was really, truly with them in ways that mattered. They talked with him, prayed with him, ate with him. They walked with him, were blessed by him and taught by the resurrected Jesus.
In the years to follow, they told and retold, and eventually put to paper, the stories of their experiences with the risen Lord – stories that are meant to convey that their experiences with Christ were very real –
even while they were not like the experiences they had with him before his death. Because the risen Christ they encountered was not the same as he was before. He was utterly transformed.
And Christ’s transformation in the resurrection signals the beginning of God’s work of transformation in the world. Christ is transformed; in Christ we are transformed. Christ has new life; in Christ we have new life. What is more, because of Christ’s resurrection the world is changed. We live in a world transformed by the risen Christ, and so we proclaim him Lord. As the church has been doing for nearly two thousand years, we proclaim Jesus is Lord.
Jesus is Lord. It is not Caesar who is Lord. It is not Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk who is Lord. It is not Vladimir Putin who is Lord. Jesus is Lord, the one who defeated death and the power of empire for all time – however and wherever we find empire in our place and time. You may say that empire is a thing of the past, but I say to you that the same empire that killed Jesus is still with us today.
Empire is found wherever the ones who have power work first and foremost to retain and increase their power. Empire is found wherever violence is called peacekeeping. Empire is driven by the belief that life is a zero-sum game, so the powerful ones must hold down, drain, crush the powerless ones, impoverish them. The empire then tells these poor ones that their poverty is their own fault.
Jesus stood against the Empire. He stood alone before Pilate, before Herod, when everyone else had abandoned him. He stood trial and received his condemnation and death.
And on the third day he rose.
Jesus’ resurrection is the proof that God chose him over empire. God chose the one who stood against the powers of empire, and always will stand against these powers. It is the resurrection that puts the glory of Christ, a glory we share, in proper perspective.
It is the resurrection that allows us to say that Christ has defeated the powers of death and we need not live in fear. It is what gives us the strength to rise each new day and face the hardships and disappointments of our lives, keeping hope in goodness. It is what gives us the courage and the will to stand up against tyranny and evil in this world.
Because of Easter, we know something about God. We know that God is for justice, and as the body of Christ we are to stand where he stood: against the unjust powers of the world. There is no lack of opportunity for us to do this.
Believe it.
The disciples of Jesus did not yet believe on that first early Easter morning. They were still bewildered, confused, and afraid. But soon they would experience him for themselves – in the garden and in the upper room; on the mountain and on the lakeshore; on the road to Emmaus and for Paul, much later, on the road to Damascus. And still later, you and I may encounter the risen Christ, too.
As a poet once said, Christ plays in ten thousand places. We may meet the risen Lord anywhere, and like all the disciples before us, be transformed by the experience.
May we know the risen Christ and be so transformed. May we proclaim with all our being, Jesus is Lord. Amen.
