EASTER SUNDAY OF THE RESURRECTION OF THE LORD
Acts 10:34, 37-43
I Corinthians 5:6-8
John 20:1-9
One of the old Latin hymns for Easter starts off this way: “The strife is o’er, the battle done; The victory of life is won; The song of triumph has begun: Alleluia!” That hymn captures the meaning of the Resurrection. Jesus has faced the worst that human beings can do to each other and overcome it. Jesus has been hounded by the forces of evil and death and put them to rout. Jesus has taken sinfulness of world onto himself and transformed it into glory. No wonder we sing Alleluia. St. Augustine said we are “Easter people and Alleluia is our song.” As the Psalmist put it, “This is the day the Lord has made, let us be glad and rejoice.” We scatter flowers about. We sing songs of joy. We wear our finest clothes – Easter bonnets, anyone? – all because we understand that Easter is the dividing line of history. Before Easter humanity was waiting to see if the darkness would triumph. After Easter we know that death does not get the last word, that God can transform tragedy into triumph, that carrying the cross is merely prelude to wearing the crown. Oh, Happy Day.
That is what this Easter liturgy is all about. However, life can feel different from what the liturgy is telling us. The strife is not over. There are still difficulties and divisions between nations, in our country, in our city, in our families. The battle is not done. We are still struggling to create a more just and peaceful society. The victory is not won as any victim of abuse, hatred, discrimination can testify. We are still on the battlefield, where even the simplest things seem to be a problem. And that song of triumph which characterizes Easter has hit a few sour notes when put into the arena of daily life. Our Alleluias can feel forced. The challenge for us as believers – how to have an Easter faith that God has already triumphed over sin and death when we are living with violence and hatred and cancer and racism and poverty. Jesus’ triumph over death feels hollow when we are mourning the death of someone we love. You only need to read the newspaper to know that sin has not gone away. How do we sing our Alleluias in a world of “what’s it to ya’s?”
The Gospel story about the first Easter gives us the clue we need. As St. John tells the story on the first Easter morning that those who encountered the fact of Jesus risen from the dead “did not yet understand.” Mary Magdalene, Peter, the beloved disciple were running around trying to make sense of things. Since Jesus was risen everything was supposed to be different, everything was new. Let’s throw out the old yeast and rejoice at the Easter miracle. And yet, despite the resurrection, the old was still there. They still had the same problems on Sunday that they had on Saturday. The family was still strained, sickness had to be dealt with, the bills had to be paid, the government had to be confronted, the grudges had to be healed. No wonder they did not yet understand. But the key to Easter, as the gospel tells it was that the beloved disciples “saw and believed.” He didn’t understand, but he believed. He believed that no matter how things appeared, the Risen Jesus had shown that the worst that happens in life can be redeemed. that God can make a way out of no way, that love triumphs in the end. He believed that what mattered most was not the troubles but the joy.
Church, this tells us that the miracle of Easter was not simply what happened to Jesus but also what happened to Mary Magdalene, Peter, the Beloved Disciple and all the rest. The resurrection happened in them as it did for Jesus. That is why every day during the Easter season the Church assigns a selection from the Acts of the Apostles. These fifty days model for us how to live as Easter people. Reading the Acts we see how the Risen Jesus transformed the fear-filled, hot-headed, depressed and anxious disciples into bold and confident witnesses of the God’s graceful presence. They might not understand why hardships still existed despite the power and goodness of God, but they believed that the Risen Jesus proves that love wins in the end.
As we hear from the Acts in the days and weeks ahead we should be attentive to what made belief like that possible, namely life together in community. There is so much hostility in the world the constant temptation is to hunker down, to lift the drawbridge, to duck one’s head. The Easter people did the opposite. They connected with each other, they cared for each other, they reached out to each other, they supported each other. It was the ability to create a different way of being together which enabled those first Christians to live joyfully even as the tsunami of the troubles just kept coming. Pagan commentators observed: “Look how those Christians love one another.” Because they loved one another they experienced the blessed assurance that all would be well, all manner of things would be well. And this strengthened them in their dealings with the world. Since they had each other those first Christians could confront oppressive authority, they could insist that every human being had a worth and value, that living in the truth will set you free, that forgiving seventy times seventy times is the way to happiness, that this is God’s world which needs to be tended and cared for. The story of the Risen Jesus at Easter is not only about what happened to him but also about what happens in us. The strife is over and the battle done not in the world but in our midst, in our hearts. That is why alleluia is our song.
