Easter Day

Acts 1-.34-43; Luke 24.1-12

It's good to welcome you all on this the Feast of Feasts, the greatest day in the Christian calendar. In some respects we seem to have been a long time getting to Easter with the long and very cold Winter that started just before this story started, of which we hear the latest chapter this morning, the story of our Lord Jesus Christ. But now Easter is here and it's a great and wonderful celebration that should lift us all up no matter what is happening in our lives at this time; because the resurrection of Jesus Christ is all about new birth and especially about our spiritual new birth. And today is all the more special as the festival is being celebrated in the Church worldwide today. Whereas in some years the Churches of East and West celebrate it on different dates, today we are all celebrating it together. And in every village, town and city of this land even if not in every home, the resurrection of Jesus is being celebrated. No other event, certainly in this country has such a huge following, year after year after year.

Most of us who will be in church today will be at least acquainted with the story of Jesus and some more than others. But I want to say right away that knowing the story actually means nothing at all. All of us are attracted and repelled by different parts of the story of Jesus. Some of us hear it continuously week by week and year by year. Others hear just bits of it on the infrequent occasions when they come to church, as many will today. But whether we come every week and even read our Bible at home or whether we come on the odd occasion, it really doesn't matter. Because what does matter is what the story means to you and whether or not it makes a difference to your life.

So many people today seem to want to take the story away from us. They tell us it's nonsense and therefore bad for us. Well, I could go on and on about those sorts of opinions, as I have before, but it seems to me that they want to take it away from us because it's too much of a challenge for them. They can't cope with having the story of Jesus around, because it's too much of a challenge, so they don't want to be reminded of it by us. They think they know what it's about, they think they know what it means, but in actual fact they've only read it, or heard it, and from the information they've picked up seek to make judgements about it. But the whole point about the story of Jesus Christ is that it's not just to be read, it's to be lived; and only as it's lived and lived for a life time, does it begin to make sense. So those who don't live it are in no place to make judgements about it at all.

We begin to live the story of Jesus Christ in our own lives at our baptism. At our baptism the Holy Spirit of God comes upon us and through His grace working in us we begin to become like Him. But only if we act in co-operation with Him throughout our lives, living according to His commandments, the commandment to love Him and our neighbour as ourselves. What happens most often is that once we are back across the church threshold after our baptism, out of church and into the world, all of what has happened to us in that baptism is forgotten and we are raised without the opportunity for God's grace to work in us and so we grow for ever further and further away from God. And so we remain as dead we were before we were given the life of God's Spirit in baptism. That light of God, if it continues to burn in us burns very dimly indeed. And you know that is what the Church means by sin. We think that sin means doing bad things. Well, that's only a very small part of it. Sin is our estrangement from God. Being estranged from God is like being dead. That's what St. Paul meant when he came out with that very hackneyed phrase 'the wages of sin is death'. It really means that being estranged from God, living without God in your life, is death.

With all of this in mind , there are three phrases in our gospel reading this morning that say all we need to hear on a day such as this and get us to think again about what Jesus Christ is all about and what being a Christian really is all about in very practical terms. First of all the women come to the tomb looking for Jesus. There they are met by angels who say 'why do you look for the living among the dead?' All of us go through life looking for just that - Life. And where do we look for life? Most often we look for life in what is no more than entertainment or addictions. Or more seriously we look for life in relationships and for some people as many relationships as they can possibly make until making relationships itself becomes an addiction. Sooner or later we come to realise that all these things in which we looked for life are in fact dead things. Life can't be found there. We know it, but just carry on regardless. 'Why do you look for the living amongst the dead'?

So the women are told what has happened to Jesus, the angels remind them of what He himself said to them. And having remembered, put two and two together and go and tell those closest of Jesus's followers, the ones that you would expect to have been ready to believe. And what does St. Luke tell us about their response to what they've heard? 'But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them'. Back to what I was saying about just hearing the story. So many people think of the story of Jesus and His resurrection as no more than an idle tale and don't believe. And if Jesus's closest followers thought that then, how much more will we 2,000 years later show that same sort of response and consider what we hear as 'just an idle tale'.

But there is one there that decides not just to take what he hears at face value. He doesn't leave his own response simply as empty judgementalism. He decides to act on what he's heard. He's been told that the tomb is empty so he goes to see for himself. It's something so simple. Peter just went to take a look for himself. And having acted on what he heard what happens? Well the result is that 'he went home amazed', St. Luke says. St. James some years later wrote a letter in which he said that Christians shouldn't just be hearers of the word but should be doers of it. And that I think comes from what Jesus said after His Sermon on the Mount when he said that 'those who hear his words and act on them are like a wise man who built his house on a rock, and nothing could prevail against it.' So St. Peter shows us what is so necessary about understanding what the message of Jesus Christ is all about. It demands not just hearing what he says but actually doing it. We can never understand anything about Christianity unless we live the life and live it to its fullest. We began at our baptism where we were immersed in the water and rose to that new life, entered that new life, took our first breaths in it. That was the first action, submitting ourselves to baptism. What happened after that depends entirely upon ourselves and when we are infants, upon those who nurture us.

At our baptism, we enter the resurrection life of Jesus Christ Himself, who was Himself, as He said, 'the Way, the Truth and the Life'. It is here, as followers of Christ that we find that Life we are looking for. But we only discover it, we only understand that Life, we only live that Life if we don't just leave it at hearing about it, but actually get on and live it. Today, as we remember and celebrate the risen Jesus Christ we have another opportunity, maybe our last, or maybe it's our first, to either continue in the road to Life or take our first steps, in faith upon it. It's never too late to begin to find the Life you've been looking for. You are sitting amongst it now, on this Easter Day. How will you respond? Are you content to let it remain an idle tale, or are you willing, like Peter to take those steps into real Life and be amazed?