Easter 2

Easter 2 AFTER EASTER 3/31/05 & 4/3/05

This week “after Easter” is a very challenging one for me, our church staff, and for many Christians. It is challenging for me and our staff because, necessarily so, we have postponed some important responsibilities until “after Easter.” It is not uncommon for me to say and think, in the preceding weeks we call the season of Lent, “That will just have to wait until ‘after Easter’!” Well, guess what time it is now? Right! It is now “after Easter”! The time foretold! The time to accomplish what needs to be accomplished this week, in addition to those numerous details that have been “delayed” over the past weeks until these days, “after Easter.” These days of “catch-up” come immediately upon the heels of the most demanding week we encounter as Pastors and church staff. These are challenging days “after Easter”! The work load is high, while the energy level is understandably low!

What is also often low in these days “after Easter” is worship attendance. At Grace, this week’s worship attendance is not likely low compared to our average weekly attendance during the year…but, expectedly, low compared to Easter morning. Comparatively, it is likely we had about as many people in worship at our 9 a.m. Easter worship service as we will have in our combined worship services just one week later. Easter Day brings people out, but this same level of attendance and enthusiasm is seldom continued into these days “after Easter.” Add to this that the palm branches are gone, only a few lilies remain, and we lose one full hour of sleep on this week-end. These are all ingredients of these days “after Easter.” So what shall we do on this week “after Easter”?

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus repeatedly told people not to spread the word about Him. After they were healed (Luke 5:14), after they witnessed miracles (Matthew 17:9), after they had discovered something of Jesus’ identity (Matthew 16:20), Jesus consistently admonished people not to tell anyone. That “gag” order upon Christ’s followers was not permanent, however. Jesus indicated another “time change” as He was coming down from the Mount of Transfiguration with Peter, James, and John. Reading in Matthew 17:9 , “Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.” Therein lies the key for us…this single statement clearly defines the time-change for the Christian Church. We not only enter Daylight Savings Time on this week-end “after Easter,” the Church enters “soul saving time”. These are the days we are to begin telling people about Jesus. “Tell no one…until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.” That time is now. We live in the time “after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

Christianity is founded upon a fact, an astounding, unexpected---though previously announced---event: the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Christians are those people who see all human history—past, present, and future--- in light of this event that occurred in a cemetery near the city of Jerusalem. The resurrection of Jesus is the core, founding, irreducible event upon which our faith rests and builds. We confess this in our creeds, saying: “I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” The resurrection says who we are. This world, for all of its goodness and wonder, is not the end, nor the ultimate destination of human life. We read in our Epistle lesson, “By God’s great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” (1 Pt. 3:3) The resurrection of Jesus, the Easter miracle, changes everything about the way we comprehend life and the way we confront death. When the power of death is defeated, the purpose of life is defined for all who believe.

Without the resurrection, we are without hope. With the resurrection, through all the challenges of life, we can persevere because we know how this story ends. We know the story is in the hands of the God who raised His crucified Son from the grave. Without the resurrection, we have nothing to say to a hurting and broken world. With the resurrection, we have good news and we are to live as the very embodiment of this good news! The gospel calls for personal response, for Jesus was not only raised, Jesus is living and preparing and returning one day!

In Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” on a trip that detours into the Georgia woods, a family encounters a murderous criminal. As he cold-heartedly and systematically shoots to death each member of the family, he tells the grandmother: “If Jesus has been raised from the dead, he shouldn’t have. He done thrown everything out of kilter. He should have stayed dead.” Jesus’ resurrection has, indeed, “thrown everything out of kilter”---with dead bodies rising and dead ends turned into bright futures and all the old laws of life and death overturned. Death was once the clamp that held us firmly in its grip, but that is no longer true as we live and love in these days “after Easter.” AMEN.

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