FIRST READING Acts 10:34-43
34Peter opened his mouth and said: “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, 35but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. 36As for the word that he sent to Israel, preaching good news of peace through Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all), 37you yourselves know what happened throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism that John proclaimed: 38how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. 39And we are witnesses of all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, 40but God raised him on the third day and made him to appear, 41not to all the people but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. 42And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. 43To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
PSALM Psalm 16
1 Protect me, O God, for in you I take refuge. 2 I say to the LORD, “You are my LORD; I have no good apart from you.” 3 As for the holy ones in the land, they are the noble, in whom is all my delight. 4 Those who choose another god multiply their sorrows; their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names upon my lips. 5 The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot. 6 The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; I have a goodly heritage. 7 I bless the LORD who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me. 8 I keep the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. 9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices; my body also rests secure. 10 For you do not give me up to Sheol, or let your faithful one see the Pit. 11 You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
SECOND READING Colossians 3:1-4
1If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
GOSPEL Matthew 28:1-10
1Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. 4And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men. 5But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. 6He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. 7Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. See, I have told you.” 8So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9And behold, Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him. 10Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.”
LIFE IN THE RESURRECTION ZONE
Well we finally made it! After 40 days of introspection, of searching our lives and confessing our failure to live as God’s people; of spending the last week pondering the extreme depth of God’s love in Jesus’ betrayal, suffering, and horrific death on the Cross, we’ve finally come to Resurrection day. The day when Jesus, by the power of almighty God, broke the bonds of death and emerged victorious from the grave. Today, as we gratefully praise God, acknowledging that because of Jesus’ obedience, we can proclaim that we have forgiveness of our sins, that we have been reconciled to the Father and now enjoy the assurance of eternal life with Him in glory.
Today is the day that we joyfully declare He is Risen indeed! But as the excitement of the morning wanes, we’re left with questions like, the what does all this mean for us as disciples of Jesus? As the excitement of the day subsides, what comes next for those who truly love and follow God’s wishes and will? Today, Easter Sunday, we acknowledge that the Resurrection is the fulfillment of the Messiah’s work, which means, that this is the beginning of ours. Once again proclaiming that in our Baptism we died to sin and were raised with Christ in His Resurrection. And being raised anew in the waters of our Baptism, we recognize that are now longer of this world. On this day when we celebrate Christ’s victory over death, we must once again ask ourselves, do we really mean it when we say I believe, and if so, how does that change the way I live?
When we say, I believe He is Risen, as we confess each week in one of the Creeds, do we fully comprehend that we’re saying that we believe that the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus in at the heart, at the very center, of who we are and what we believe? With the Resurrection squarely in front of us, what does all this really mean to us and our lives from today forward? Truth be told, for the child of God, it means that the Resurrection was the completion of the work of God’s Messiah and beginning of our work as His followers. But believing all this doesn’t mean that life will be easy.
In the movie, Shawshank Redemption, the character, Red, is being released from prison after decades behind bars. The actor portraying Red, Morgan Freeman, shows various emotions as he walks out of prison toward the uncertainty of freedom. Although the guards haven’t been the best characters in this movie, here at the first gate, four guards are clearly glad that Red’s getting out and they obviously wish the best for him. However, there are no guarantees when you leave prison, and they all know it.
Red, finally free of confinement, must now make difficult choices in order to remain free. However, after thirty years in prison, Red has become, as he says, “an institutional man” within the penal system. He’ll find it doubly difficult making reasonable and responsible choices as a free person, let alone as one carrying the social stigma of being an ex-convict. But when you think about it, there aren’t any real guarantees for anyone in this world that we live in.
We’re always faced with how we’ll make choices, and life challenges us to decide what basis we’ll make our choices upon. This is especially true for the committed disciple of Jesus. Christians understand that we live between two worlds. Each day and each decision leaves us with the question of which do we choose to guide us? Do we allow the things of this world determine our choices, or do we, as Paul directs, “set our minds on things that are above?” (Col. 3:2) You could say that it’s like living across the street from a different time zone.
I remember when Terry and I were stationed at Nellis AFB in Las Vegas. Arizona, as some of you may know, doesn’t observe Daylight Savings time, so part of the year Nevada and Arizona are on the same time. However, the other part of the year, there’s an hour difference. This doesn’t sound like much of a problem, that is until you try to make plans only to find out that you failed to take this into consideration. People who live in one time zone close to another, have to calculate which time to leave in the one time zone, in order to arrive on time a few minutes down the road – at times we can feel like you’re living on the fence between two clocks.
G. A. Studdert Kennedy wrote a poem sometime back called “Sinner and Saint.”
I’m a man, and a man’s a mixture, Right down from ‘is very birth,
For part ov ‘im comes from ‘eaven, And part ov ‘im from earth.
As children of God, part of our being originates in heaven and part from earth. But the problem we struggle with is, which influence will dominate? Because we live at the intersection of two worlds, between two zones as it were, St. Paul urges us to choose the heavenly world to take our directions from. Paul is like a trainer, a coach, encouraging us as Christians, “This is how you do it.” His goal is to help us reorient our lives because of Jesus. We’re called to make life choices by looking in the heavenly direction.
“So, if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God” (Col. 3:1). Paul tells us to center our lives around the risen Christ, who now sits at the right hand of God, exalted in heaven. And because Jesus has been raised from the dead, nothing remains on earth adequate for us to build our lives upon. We’re to set your minds on the things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Col. 3:2).
Think of it like looking into one of those fish-eyed corner mirrors in the hospitals halls. I’m sure you know the ones I’m taking about. At the intersection of halls, attached to the ceiling is a half-round, multi-dimensional mirror. When you look up and you can see in all directions. It helps to get into the habit of looking up at those mirrors so you don’t step around a corner and get flattened by a gurney. I was thinking about those mirrors the last time I was at the hospital and of how it’s important to look up. There’s a sign as you enter the P1 parking lot: “Clearance 7 Feet.” One day as I walked out of the hospital, I heard a large crash. As I got into my truck to leave, I saw a man picking up a couple of ladders that had been on a rack on top of his truck. Evidently, he didn’t look up and recognize the dangers that were just ahead. For many reasons, those multi-directional mirrors are a great reminder for us to look up. Set your minds, Paul says, on the things above.
To be sure Paul isn’t telling us that we should withdraw from earthly life. The four short verses of our epistle text are surrounded by Paul’s instructions about how and how not to live. Setting our minds on the things that are above, means learning to live on earth in a heavenly manner. We’re fortunate to have another great example of the importance of looking up, Kitty Hawk. Think of the Wright brothers and all their difficulties over years of learning how to fly a self-propelled vehicle upon air. They looked above, committed to rise above the earth. We join in a similar task as we struggle to follow Jesus.
All this because we believe and confess that Jesus was crucified, died and is now alive, that changes everything. Jesus really is alive so we set our minds on the things that are above. Jesus becomes the lens through which we view life. All of existence must now be compared to and measured by Christ. He is the prime meridian, connecting all poles of life, and all of life is oriented around Him. We even write our calendars as AD — anno Domini — “In the year of our Lord.” However, as we all know, His resurrection doesn’t automatically make our lives simple.
Jesus struggled and suffered. And we too will struggle and suffer and make mistakes and fail. But in all things, we must devote our attention and dedicate our thinking to our new life in Christ. Paul writes, “Your life is hidden with Christ in God.” He says that Christ is our life. We struggle and don’t always get all the explanations we’d like, but we trust that God will help us as we contemplate this fundamental mystery that starting with our baptism, we actually became part of the body of Christ. That’s what it means to be the church. Our life is hidden with Christ in God and we look to Him for help and guidance as we live each day. And as we live for Jesus, we don’t fully understand everything about the Christian life, but we know enough.
God doesn’t show us everything nor does He give us all the answers, but this is where faith comes in. Paul put it this way, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” (1 Cor. 13:12) Think of it this way. If you were walking down a street early this morning, and found a hole 100 feet across and thirty feet deep, where yesterday half a dozen houses sat, you’d think something huge happened. That’s what the emptiness of Jesus’ tomb means on this resurrection morning. We don’t know precisely how Jesus’ resurrection occurred. We just know that it did happen. No one saw the event, but we see the evidence afterward. This giant hole of a tomb: empty. It’s not empty of life the way at times our lives can be termed “empty.” The tomb is empty because it once was full, holding in death’s hand the body of our Lord.
The empty tomb remains of what used to imprison Christ; this is where our lives with Him start. As surely as Jesus was dead and is now alive, so we, plunged into His death in baptism, have been yanked up into new life in His Spirit. We experience right here Jesus’ resurrection — from prison to freedom, from one zone of existence to another. We’ve been resurrected with Jesus. Our final resurrection awaits us at the end of days, but already, Paul says, though we look physically the same to everyone else, we’ve been joined to Jesus, linked by faith, and ripped from the tomb with Him.
Resurrection Sunday isn’t just about Jesus’ coming back to life a long time ago in a small country near the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean. If it is, then Jesus’ resurrection is only an interesting dot in history. Easter Sunday is about our coming to life in Him. Jesus was dead and is alive in us. No one saw Jesus’ resurrection, but people see us. We’ve risen from the dead with Him. We’re the place the risen Jesus is heard and seen. So, one way to celebrate Easter Sunday is to concentrate on God’s grace in Jesus’ death and resurrection. That’s certainly enough to direct our praise to God and to redirect the rest of our lives. But another way, taking our cue from Paul, is to let God concentrate upon our dying and rising with Christ.
Think of Jesus’ ordeal in Jerusalem before His death: the trial, the mocking, the cross, the suffering, the friends who watched Him die, and the enemies who enjoyed His dying. Jesus put Himself in our place, dying for us. Now, put yourself there in Jesus’ place. The crowds yell for our death. Pilate condemns us. We’re led outside the walls of old Jerusalem. We carry our own crossbeam as far as we can; then soldiers force a passerby to assist. The soldiers strip us of our clothes and then gamble for them. They nail each of us through the forearms and ankles, tie us to the cross, and lift us up. A few close friends stand at a distance. Our enemies gleefully mock our suffering. For six hours of humiliation we hang there, with shorter breaths, and worse pain. The sky turns black. We scream, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And finally, we die. Friends come and take us down from the instrument of torture and carry us to a hewn tomb. We’re wrapped in linen and placed on the tomb’s raised ledge. A massive rock is rolled across the tomb’s mouth, and its fading echo is the last effect your life will ever make on this earth.
Now, if Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead, neither are we. The good news of Easter Sunday has been shouted for 2,000 years. It’s still true: Our Lord has risen. And we’ve been freed to live in the zone of the risen Jesus. And anytime we shout, “The Lord is risen. He has risen indeed,” we’re preoccupied with Jesus’ resurrection. All the while, God in heaven watches us leave death’s prison, that tomb from which Jesus freed us. Here we are, looking above to Jesus, as Paul instructs us to do.
Yet, heaven ripples like an earthquake of hurricanes, as God turns to each of us and shouts across all eternity, “You have risen in Christ!” And angels’ voices join like all the thunder that’s rumbled since creation, “You have risen indeed!” This is what say we believe and what we proclaim. Now, since we’ve been raised with Christ and have our life hidden with Christ in God, our call now is to seek the things that are above and live our lives accordingly.
Amen.