Sermon for Easter
admin | 31 March 2013Christ is Risen. Alleluia, Alleluia!
The Church’s ancient proclamation captures the joy and the excitement of this day. But make no mistake, the Resurrection is not some sort of clap-happy event, a happy ending to an otherwise sad and bitter tale. No. The joy and the excitement of Easter are born out of the Passion and Death of Christ. No Passion, no Resurrection. No Good Friday, no Easter day. The intensity of the Passion gives rise to the joyfulness of the Resurrection.
The Resurrection is a bodily event. But it gives rise to a new understanding of everything. There is, we might say, a resurrection of the understanding. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is, as I am fond of saying, radical new life. Radical is the right word, actually. It refers to the root of things, the radix. The Resurrection goes to the root of all life itself. That root is the reciprocal love of the Son for the Father in the bond of the Holy Spirit.
The God who creates ex nihilo – out of nothing – recreates out of the greater nothingness of sin and death. The Cross has made visible that greater nothingness. The full force of sin and evil are revealed in the crucified Christ. The greater nothingness is the vanity of our wills as against everything that is good – against one another in the human community, against the good order of creation, and against God himself. But the Cross has also made visible the far greater love of God both for us and in itself.
If the message of Good Friday is that God is dead, then the message of Easter is that death is conquered, death is dead. “Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more;/death hath no more dominion over him.” Christ is risen from the dead never to die again. The meaning of death itself is changed. The tomb is not only empty; it has become the womb of new life. The unending life of the Resurrection is accomplished in and through the darkness of death. Christ is Risen!
The Cross is the visible sign. The Resurrection is its invisible reality. We see Christ crucified. We look on him whom we have pierced. We behold him dead. But his rising to life again – that is something hid from our eyes. Like creation itself, we know it only by its effects. We see only after the fact, as it were. We know it by word – by the understanding of Faith and not by sense experience.
We proclaim the Resurrection by way of the word of witness: the silent witness of the empty tomb; the salutation of the angels; the message of Mary and above all else, the witness of the Risen Christ himself. His Resurrection is something which he wants us to know. He is the Word made flesh now risen from the dead – “a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.” The bodily reality of Christ is more, not less, and so the Resurrection for us is more not less.
The Christian doctrine of the Resurrection of the Body is the strongest possible affirmation of the reality of our humanity. We are soul and body. The body is not nothing; it belongs to the distinctiveness of our individuality. It belongs to who we are. We are not disembodied spirits. We are souls with bodies. What we shall be cannot be said with any degree of certainty – death is on the other side of our experience – but it is enough to say that we shall be like Christ. What more could we want to say than that? His Resurrection shows us the form of our resurrection. We shall be more and not less than ourselves. The body is not left out of the equation of redemption. Salvation is accomplished in the body; “caro est cardo salutis” – “the flesh is the hinge of salvation” (Tertullian).
The greater point is that the God who made us for himself has restored us to himself. We have our end in God but only through the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. That end is also our life here and now. We live the Resurrection in the body of Christ, the Church. We are identified with him in his Death and Resurrection. His Death and Resurrection become the pattern of our lives – the constant dying to ourselves and the continual living to God.
For in that he died, he died unto sin once:/
but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.
Jesus has given his life for us so that his life might live in us. That life is the life of the Resurrection. It is about “living unto God.” It is the life that has taken death into itself and overcome it. Death has been transformed into a way and not an end.
By the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are not only made adequate to the life of God, we also participate in the life of God now. The radical meaning of Christ’s Resurrection is that the life of God lives in us. We arise to walk in the ways which he has prepared for us to walk in, the ways of service and sacrifice, the ways of prayer and praise.
It means rebirth, a being born anew into life with God. It does not extinguish the past confusions of our lives but redeems the past of sin and sorrow into the way of salvation. Again, it is what Jesus shows us in his risen body. The wounds of his crucifixion, the marks of our sinfulness, are not erased; they are transformed into the marks of glory. And so it is with our lives. The Resurrection would place our lives in the love of the Son for the Father in the bond of the Holy Spirit; it is the life which shall not end.
Christ is Risen. Alleluia, Alleluia!
Fr. David Curry
Easter 2013