Easter Sunday 2008

In the last 200 years we have tried to kill Jesus again.

We tried.

We thought we’d buried him.

Placed him in a tomb and rolled across the stone once more.

We had nailed him with our superior reason.

Killed off the miracles.

Scourged him with accusations of irrelevance and obscurity in a modernised, evolved world.

We fed him wine vinegar on a sponge of softened parables and fluffy teaching.

Pieced his power with science and psychology.

We were left with nothing but a cultural hang up.

A cause of war.

The germ of hate and intolerance.

The stop light to learning.

The leader of a house of hypocrites.

We thought that was the end.

We placed atheist guards with weapons of titles and status to keep watch at the stone door of Jesus' tomb. Then went to bed thinking all had finally fallen silent.

Jesus was dead.

And the Church, his body was bloodied, broken and lifeless.

At least this is what should have happened.

Since the age of reason confidently declared ‘God is Dead’. We simply assumed we would see the slow death of Jesus and his Church too.

Well thank God, we were wrong.

Like last time we failed to keep him dead.

Jesus is alive.

Christ has risen... “He has risen indeed.”

He has risen and risen and risen and will keep rising no matter how many times we try to kill him.

Death has been conquered, once and for all.

Hell has been annihilated.

Jesus lives again.

The light that shines in darkness has not gone out.

Boundless love can never replace faceless reason.

The Christian God is a resurrection God

A God of life from death.

Christ’s body, the Church will not stand down and give way. 

It cannot be defeated no matter the torture it endures.

The Church will rise again and again and again.

So the executioners scream in protest:

“What went wrong”.

They try to rally the troops once more.

They write books declaring the ‘delusion’ of the world.

They scream out appeals to reason and sense.

And frantically find formulas that state the absurdity of a creator God who cares about everyone of us. 

They scramble to try and fill a void that has only one shape.

A shape they rejected.

Yet at Easter, Christians stand united and triumphantly declare, “Jesus lives”.

We loudly and unashamedly protest that the impossible is made possible.

Miracles happen.

Life is more that a set of predicable phenomena.

Love and hope and faith exist.

They come from Jesus.

And Jesus is not dead.

And we the Church are bearers of this faith, hope and love.

The Church is not dead.

The Church is alive again.

The world senses it has.

The crowds and officials sense it has.

The disciples sense it has.

And we ask how?

Christ was not risen by the power of his disciples, but by the power of God.

In the dead of night when all Christ’s followers were lost in their own misery. 

God raised Jesus, 

death was left behind.

No! 

It was not the result of the disciples properly researched 5 year action plans.

It was not from the establishment of a fully community negotioted vision statement.

And it was not the result of a fully coherent socially relevent yet biblically founded superior theology.

God raised Jesus.

At the moment when the disciples were at their spiritually and corporately weakest.

God raised Jesus and God raised the church.

However, some of us today stand at the entrance of the empty tomb and wonder what has happened, afraid to go in.

We wander the garden in tears because of what has happened in the past. 

Tears that cloud our understanding and hope. 

Like Mary, we blindly ask even Jesus himself ‘Where is your body so that we can give you a proper burial, befitting of they great body you once were.”

We crawl at the feet of the resurrected church and see nothing but a care-taker.

We wonder where the church has gone.

It is transformed beyond all recognition.

But Jesus stands before us all very much alive, calling our name and saying:

“Why are you crying?”

“Who are you looking for?”

Let us open our eyes and see the risen Christ.

Let us hear our names and rise to meet the risen Christ.

Rise and believe.

Let us hear the resurrected church call our own names...

Then we will believe.

Then we will have faith once more.

Or, let us like Peter and the beloved disciple look deep into the empty tomb.

Let the sight of folded grave clothes and boxed up hymn books transform us.

The Church, Christ body is not dead.

We are very much alive, growing and changing, feeding the world and on the move.

Christ is risen.

They tried to kill him again.

But He is alive.

Grace and Love conquered reason and skepticism.

Hope conquered despair.

Light conquered dark.

God’s mystery conquered human understanding.

Truth and faith conquered modernity and hypocrisy.

Forgiveness conquered a hardened heart.

and humility conquered individualism.

We tried to kill Jesus once more.

But by the power of God. 

Christ is risen

He has risen indeed.

Today, like Mary in the garden, we see and hear our Lord, saying:

“Now go and tell my disciples”.

Amen.