The Rev. Joseph Peters-Mathews is the vicar of St. Hilda St. Patrick. The sermon for Sunday, April 17, Easter Day, was preached using the manuscript below in response to 1 Corinthians 15.19-26 and John 20.1-18.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Chris is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Good morning, and happy Easter!
We’re here today to celebrate the core belief
of the Christian faith:
Christ is risen from the dead
trampling down death by death
and to those in the tombs
bestowing life.
As we’ve walked the way of the Cross this last week
and as we engaged our Lenten fasts
preparing to renew our baptismal promises last night
we’ve continued to know the reality
of death, destruction, and dispair.
When the church closed in March 2020,
we though it would be six weeks of closure.
The service register has a giant note
that there were 18 weeks of no in-person services.
Just before we began our Lenten fasts
Russia invaded Ukraine.
The world has held its breath
and we’ve seen devastation, death, and destruction.
Just this week one of our own
has moved from strength to strength,
leaving this plane and growing closer to God.
When Paul is writing to the church at Corinth
in today’s epistle lesson,
he’s not offering platitudes.
Paul’s not talking about
everything working out in the end
or one door closing
and a window opening.
Paul is writing to the church at Corinth to remind them
of the best news there is,
the good news of the gospel:
Christ is risen from the dead
trampling down death by death
and to those in the tombs
bestowing life.
“In fact Christ has been raised from the dead,
the first fruits of those who have died.
for as all die in Adam,
so all will be made alive in Christ.”
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!
This is the sorrow, surprise, and joy
that Mary feels and announces
upon finding an empty tomb,
not recognizing and then knowing Jesus,
and sharing the Good News of Jesus’ resurrection
with the rest of the disciples.
Christ has been raised from the dead,
the first fruits of those who have died.
for as all die in Adam,
so all will be made alive in Christ.
This was a new thing.
Jesus had raised Lazarus,
but that was someone else.
Jesus himself had died.
Fully.
We haven’t gotten that much smarter
in the last 2,000 years to not know that generally
people do not come back from the dead.
Our earthly bodies and minds
knew the finality of death.
The Holy Saturday lesson from Job
makes that abundantly clear:
“But mortals die, and are laid low;
humans expire, and where are they?
As waters fail from a lake,
and a river wastes away and dries up,
so mortals lie down and do not rise again;
until the heavens are no more, they will not awake
or be roused out of their sleep.”
That’s why today we celebrate
this new thing,
this new action and possibility
that God has made available to us
through nothing we’ve done or can do.
“Mortals lie down and do not rise again;
until the heavens are no more, they will not awake
or be roused out of their sleep.”
Yet Mary, going to anoint Jesus,
finds an empty tomb.
Mortals lie down and do not rise again
so she expects and fears that someone has stolen the body
of her friend, her teacher, and her savior.
When Jesus calls her by name
she’s overcome with joy and awe at
how God has come into our world
to change our world,
taking away the victory and sting
of death and the grave.
When Jesus calls Mary by name
she knows the truth of Christianity:
Christ is risen from the dead,
trampling down death by death
and on those in the tombs bestowing life.
Experiencing the resurrection first hand,
Mary goes and tells the disciples —
including the two who didn’t believe her already
and went home before Jesus revealed himself —
“I have seen the Lord.”
In our baptisms,
Jesus has called us by name
just like Mary.
In our baptisms,
which we remembered at the beginning of the service
and will every week of Easter
we have been raised to Jesus’ resurrection,
grafted on to his defeat of death with death.
In the sorry of a death this week,
the anxiety of the war in Ukraine –
and so many other things about which to be anxious about —
and the deep mourning and loss
that COVID19 has brought to our community and the world,
we have hope.
Not only hope, but assurance and faith.
“Christ has been raised from the dead,
the first fruits of those who have died.
For since death came through a human being,
the resurrection of the dead
has also come through a human being;
for as all die in Adam,
so all will be made alive in Christ.”
“We know that Christ is raised and dies no more.
Embraced by death, he broke its fearful hold,
and our despair he turned to blazing joy.
…
A new creation comes to life and grows
as Christ’s new body takes on flesh and blood.
The universe, restored and whole, will sing:
Alleluia!”
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!