Easter of 2013 is my 19th Easter as Rector of this parish. It has been a wonderful 19 years. Some of you I only see on Easter, but after 19 years I do look forward to seeing you and it seems like we’ve become old friends!
The year 2013 has been quite an eventful year for the Church already. If you have been watching the news you realize that there is now a new Archbishop of Canterbury. Canterbury is in England and the Archbishop of Canterbury is the spiritual head of the Anglican Communion. Archbishop Justin Welby was enthroned on the Chair of St. Augustine of Canterbury on the 21st of March. And that was just two days after Pope Francis the First was inaugurated in Rome. What a week! That week, perfect strangers, seeing me in my clericals, would speak to me and say something like “What do you think of the new man?” First of all, I was so impressed that they even knew there was such a thing as an Archbishop of Canterbury, and then I was surprised that they would know we Episcopalians have anything to do with an archbishop in England. It did occur to me that when people saw me in my clericals they might have mistaken me for being a Roman Catholic priest!
And it all started some 2000 years ago. The disciples had spent three intensive years with Jesus because they thought he was the Messiah. They understood these years to be a preparation for the time when Jesus would usher in a new kingdom that would make King David’s monarchy pale by comparison. And they would be the ones Jesus would use to establish his rule.
It would be a kingdom like no other—a kingdom characterized by justice and peace, a kingdom in which everyone would be prosperous, a kingdom free of poverty and disease, where God truly would reign. They had witnessed what they thought was the beginning of that kingdom, when their Lord and Master rode into Jerusalem on an ass, in fulfillment of Messianic prophecy.
And then it all quickly came to an end. Jesus had been betrayed by one of their own. He was arrested, quickly tried, and put to death like so many other would-be messiahs. He had been shamed, disgraced, discredited, shown to be an imposter — he and his followers squelched by the powerful, cruel, and efficient Roman government.
As one preacher puts it, “His men followers had left him completely in the lurch. They had quailed from Jesus during his darkest hour, faster than a politician can ditch an unpopular position.” There was no doubt in their minds. It was finished. The task at hand was to distance themselves as quickly as possible from being Jesus’ followers, get over their grief, and get on with their lives.
Then some women discovered the empty tomb, and a messenger who told them that Jesus had been raised from the dead. For several days thereafter the risen Christ appeared to some 500 people, even eating and drinking with some of them.
There have been skeptics from the beginning, St. Thomas being the most famous, although when he did see the risen Christ he made the greatest statement of faith ever made: “My Lord and my God!” St. Paul encountered persons in the Church at Corinth who did not believe in the resurrection. In his first letter to them he writes, “Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain.”
The witness of all of the apostles is that Jesus was raised from the dead. They based their ministries on it. They staked their lives on it. Pascal, the French mathematician and Christian philosopher, said, “The hypothesis that the apostles were knaves is quite absurd. Follow it out to the end and imagine these twelve men meeting after Jesus’ death and conspiring to say that he had risen from the dead. This means attacking all the powers that be. The human heart is singularly susceptible to fickleness, to change, to promises, to bribery. One of them had only to deny his story under these inducements, or still more because of possible imprisonment, tortures, and death, and they would all have been lost.”
Instead, the resurrection brought about a burst of activity that sent apostles throughout the Roman Empire, establishing communities of faith wherever they went. They were willing to endure hardships, imprisonment, torture, and even martyrdom for their belief. The resurrection has been proclaimed ever since as the most important, most fundamental belief of the Church.
This most powerful element of our faith is proclaimed every times we say the creeds, and in many of our prayers, for we end so many of our prayers “through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with (the Father) and the Holy Spirit.” And this day, the annual celebration of the resurrection, is the day when Christians of even the most minimal of faith come to worship.
I believe in the resurrection most of all because I know the resurrected Lord in my own life, and in the lives of others. That presence is the most powerful, truest reality in this life, and that presence confirms the witness of the Church over the ages. In other words, you, and Christians like you, lead me to faith and continually strengthen that faith. I visit with a sick parishioner, and hear her tell me of her relationship with Jesus, and see the holiness in her life, making her unafraid and quite whole even in sickness, and I leave that hospital room having been blessed. And my faith in the risen Christ is strengthened.
I talk with business persons in our parish, see the integrity with which they go about their businesses, and hear them talk, sometimes with tears in their eyes, about their walk with Christ—and my faith in the risen Christ is strengthened.
People living according to their faith in a culture that is faithless; integrity in the midst of hypocrisy, charity in a society that is self-serving; people living Christ-centered lives when it would be much easier, and more natural, and more generally accepted to lead self-centered lives. These things ring true, and bear witness to the resurrection.
The risen Lord is the reality that propelled the apostles to live and die for Christ. That is the reality that Christians have experienced through the ages, which our new Archbishop of Canterbury and Pope Francis the First will proclaim in myriad ways, and that brings us here today. May you and I live in the power of the resurrection this day and all the days of our lives.
Jesus Christ is risen today. Alleluia. Our triumphant holy day. Alleluia.
Sing we to our God above. Alleluia. Praise eternal as his love. Alleluia