"He is Risen!"

An Easter Sermon by Rev. Linda Roberts-Baca

 As many of you know, when I was 7-years-old my 5-year-old brother died. I still remember the night my sister and I came home, after being at our grandparent’s house, to find his little bed made, with its red corduroy bedspread tucked neatly around the corners, and his pillow, untouched, underneath.

When we saw that little bed made at night and my brother not sleeping soundly in it, my sister and I both knew what our mother did not want to tell us: our brother was gone, and whatever that meant, we knew enough to know we would never see him, at least, not on this earth, in this life, again.

I thought about that whole episode a few weeks ago, when I found myself standing at my brother’s grave. It was a cold day and the sky was overcast and there was no one at the cemetery but me. Someone had dropped a little purple iris from a bouquet from some other flowers, from another funeral, on the ground. I picked it up and put it in the little vase next to my brother’s plaque, lying in the grass; and thought about my brother; and T. S. Eliot's poem, "Burnt Norton" from The Four Quartets:

"Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,

Hidden excitedly, containing laughter

Go, go, go, said the bird...

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present."

Had he lived here, my brother would be around 45-years-old.

You know, death is what hurts us most in this world; and if you live long enough--death and time are the thieves that, eventually take away everyone we know and love.

Which is why we need to remember on this Easter day the words of the Apostle Paul which Bill read for us today:

“O death, where is thy victory?

O death, where is thy sting?

Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

 The Apostle Paul could say this because he had met the One who had overcome death with life, namely Jesus. I’d like to think about Paul a little this morning because it is people, like Paul, throughout the Bible, that can help us rekindle our faith.

 In fact, that is what the Apostle Paul tells his young friend, Timothy: to rekindle the faith and gifts that are within him--faith and gifts that had been handed down from his grandmother and his mother and now entrusted to him.

 But, the Apostle Paul wasn’t always a believer. And, although he became the foremost missionary in the Christian world of his time, he wasn’t always faithful. At one time, he had been the foremost persecutor of Christians. And he wasn’t always called Paul. His original name was Saul and he was not just a good Jew; he was a Jew among Jews endeavoring to keep Judaism uncontaminated from this new and foreign faith and these apostate Jews who had become followers of a Jewish man named Jesus.

 So, the Bible tells us Paul use to go on hunting parties, as it were, to round up Jews who had embraced the Christian faith; he didn't exactly kill anybody, he just organized others to do so and stood by, holding the victims coats, while others stoned and killed them. I mentioned this about Paul to a Jewish friend of mine at a party, who said he’d never heard of Paul; never knew he was Jewish; became an Apostle; and, later, the foremost missionary and evangelist for the Risen Lord.

 Which is why I mention him today. See, if you’ve wondered did these things really happen? Did Jesus really rise from the dead? I invite you to remember Paul. And, not only Paul but all of Christ’s disciples--all of whom were also Jewish--because they were real people, who really lived, and whose lives historians have recorded...And, the only thing that could change a man like Saul into a man like Paul was an encounter with the Living God.

 There’s no other way to explain it. See, it wasn’t like Saul reasoned himself to the God of Jesus Christ. And it wasn’t like Paul just blindly accepted the Christian faith. No, no, he was much too stubborn for that... No, but a real encounter with the Living Lord would have the power to change his mind.

 And, that’s precisely whom he met: The Risen Lord. Maybe you know the story. One day, riding on a horse, down a road to Damascus, Saul saw the brightest light he’d ever seen and a voice, within the light, saying “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” To which he answered, “Who are you, Lord?” “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting,” the voice inside that bright light said. It was such an astonishing experience it, literally, knocked Saul to the ground and left him blind for several days.

 It was enough to change his mind about this faith called Christianity. And, the funny thing is--at least I’ve always marveled at it--how God didn’t so much change Paul’s nature, as use it for a greater purpose, God's own. Saul was a very zealous man. So was Paul. God needed that zeal. I think about Paul, and all those other disciples, because I believe they are the best proof--if proof is what you’re looking for--of the reality of Christ’s resurrection.

 I mean, apart from Christ, apart from an encounter with the Risen Lord, none of them would ever have become the people that they became: Peter might have always been a coward; Judas might have always betrayed (of course, we don’t know, since he decided to take his own life and didn't stick around to find out who he might have been after Jesus had forgiven him--which Jesus would have done); Thomas might have always doubted; and Mary Magdalene might have always sinned.

 But, in the light of Christ’s resurrection, these men and women became something better, something brighter, something more. John became more trustworthy, and Peter more courageous. I guess you could say, in a sense, they became their own true selves: their best ones--the ones whom God created and intended them to be....

 Episcopal priest and writer, Barbara Brown Taylor, wrote, in her 2008 Easter Sermon:

 "Every time Jesus appeared to his friends (after His resurrection) they became stronger, wiser, kinder, more daring. Every time he came to them, they became more like him…

 These appearances,” Barbara Brown Taylor goes on to write, “cinch the reality of the resurrection for me, not just what happened in the tomb.”

 But, how many of us, in this life, get stuck at the tomb? Or the graveside? Or the illness? Or the loss? How many of us can’t see past the tomb and graveside, illness and loss to the promises of God in Jesus Christ and the reality of Easter?

 I thought about this the day I stood, beneath those pine trees, in that cemetery I mentioned at the beginning of this sermon. And, as I peered beyond my brother’s grave, I thought I could almost hear the sound of children playing on the lawn, between the trees, in a place I couldn’t quite make out, in a place I can't quite see.

 You know, it is that promised place--just like that promised land--promised by the same God who promised His people so long ago a place, a promised place on earth--only this place is for everyone, everyone who trusts in God. It is a place where death will be no more neither tears or darkness: only life.

 And all because: "Christ is Risen! He is Risen, indeed.”

 ...Who knows what the Risen Lord will do for you and me and all who trust in Him? Maybe we will grow in faith to say like Paul ‘Death where is your sting?” And, live to hear amidst those cemetery trees the sound of children laughing, because we are people who have come to believe and know the promises of God are true: death is not the end, life is.

 In the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Amen?

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