Easter Year A RCL April 24, 2011
God has such love for the creation and for us that God comes to be with us, is born in a little town in the Middle East, grows up the child of a carpenter in a village called Nazareth, embarks on a brief ministry of teaching, preaching, and healing in which Jesus builds a community of men, women, and children, a community based on agape, unconditional love, a community which offers a new quality of life called the kingdom of God, the reign of God, the shalom of God. This kingdom is not something only for the hereafter, but for right now.
The vision of Jesus proves a threat to those in power, and all this past week we have walked with him as he surrenders to the powers of death. Actually, though, he is surrendering to the power of God’s love.
He has told us that he comes among us as one who serves. He has washed the feet of his followers. He has endured taunts and jeers, a mock trial, and the horrors of the cross. And even as he endures all of this, he prays for us to be forgiven.
As we have walked the Way of the Cross with him and his disciples, we have experienced some of the horror of his desolation as he gives up his spirit, is taken from the cross and placed in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.
And then, on that amazing morning, we go to the tomb early, hearts so heavy we can scarcely bear it, and the tomb is empty. Death no longer has dominion. Tragedy gives way to hope—ultimate hope in all things. He faces the forces of death and brokenness, and he returns transfigured. We will see him along the Road to Emmaus; we won’t even realize who he is at first, but we will recognize him in the breaking of the bread. And we will see him on the beach, there with a breakfast already prepared for us as we come in from fishing. We will see him in other places. We cannot possibly understand all of this, but the fact is that he is alive. He is risen. He is here in the very midst of us, always, alive and calling us to new life. Paradoxically, he is able to be more present with all of us all around the world than if he had lived.
Because we are his risen body. As Paul said, it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us.
And that means that everything is transformed. All the deaths and the kinds of death, large and small, that we may undergo, are as nothing. Nothing can get in the way of his love and healing. And the quality of life that he had with that first community is available to us—to you and me—as we live in him and he lives in us.
He is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
Filed under: Reverend Janet Brown, Sermons |
Grace Episcopal Church (Sheldon, VT) 