EASTER:  THE PROMISE AND FULFILLMENT OF OUR FAITH

EASTER DAY

12 April, AD 2009

TEXT:  St. Mark 16:1f

“And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted.  And he saith unto them, ‘Be not affrighted:  Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified:  He is risen; He is not here:  behold the place where they laid Him.  But go your way, tell His disciples and Peter that He goeth before you into Galileë there shall ye see Him, as He said unto you.’”

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the Dead on the third day is both the promise and the fulfillment of our Christian Faith.  The season of Lent which challenged us to strip down our lives, just as Our Lord was stripped of His garments at His Crucifixion, called us to pay special attention to the essentials in our lives because God knows how prone we are in mistaking wants for needs.  We have fully participated in the Triumphant Entry of Our Lord into the great city of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday; have walked with Him in the midst of the Temple during Holy Week; have shared His most private moments with His Apostles on Maundy Thursday evening.  We witnessed the agony of His bloody sweat and Passion on Good Friday as He hung on the Cross and subsequently died for the sins of the whole world.  We have held our spiritual breath as Holy Saturday melted into Easter Eve watching for a glimmer, a spark of the power that must have emanated from Jesus’ Resurrection and now, today, we arrive into the fulness of the realization of LIFE with God for all eternity.  For we are reminded, just as the Apostles were, of Jesus own words to us – “I came that you might have life . . . Life in all its abundance!  So we understand, from the outset, that the reality of Our Lord’s Resurrection on Easter is the seminal event of our Christian Faith.  It’s not simply just another nice Easter tradition; along the line of jelly beans, Easter eggs, chocolate bunnies, marshmallow peeps, and a pretty parade.  It is much more.  Easter means Life and a particular kind of Life at that!  

To emphasize that fact, all we have to do is to look at the New Testament, even very briefly to see that Resurrection is not the same thing as resuscitation.  The raising of Jairus’ daughter in St. Mark’s Gospel, the raising of Lazarus in St. John’s Gospel, and Tabitha and Eutychus in Acts were shown to be, very importantly, the ultimate, supernatural extension of cure and healing by Jesus.  At all of these events the Greek word used for this raising to life again is “egeiro” which means, to awaken.  However, in all references to the Resurrection of Our Lord, a very different word is always used by the Greek and that is “anastasis” or Resurrection.  There is something very much different between a body that has simply been resuscitated and one that has been Resurrected.  Again, we have only to look in the pages of the New Testament to see the different qualities of Jesus’ Resurrected Body.  The first theological attribute of Our Lord’s Resurrected Body was subtlety, or the complete control of the body by Spiritual rather than earthly laws.  Jesus’ Body was no longer limited by time and space.  Secondly, His Body had the attribute of agility, or the lack of becoming fatigued.  No longer limited by natural laws, Jesus’ muscles no longer ached from over-exertion or weakness.  Third, Jesus’ Body was no longer a slave to hunger, pain, or death.  The early Church Fathers described this attribute as impassibility.  And, finally, Our Lord’s Body manifested forth magnificence or Glory, as depicted by a halo in much Christian art.  These are the four theological attributes that Our Lord’s Resurrected body revealed, along with the wounds of His Passion which identified Him as Jesus.  It was in this way, one of the greatest persecutors of the entire Christian Church met Jesus along the way to Damascus.  That man’s name was Saul and later, Paul.

It is important for us to remember that, as St. Paul, himself, attests, that he preached a Gospel not handed down to him from the Apostles, but from the Resurrected Lord Jesus Christ, Himself.  It was He that Saul met on that road.  It was not a dead prophet that called to him, but the Resurrected King of Glory, the Author of Creation; the One whose Resurrection was and is a fulfillment of the assurance and promise that God is not the God of the Dead, but of the living!  And as such we, His people, share in and participate in that new and abundant life given to us as a free act of God’s Grace through His Son, Jesus Christ!  We know, from I Corinthians, that however God has foreordained it, we will share in Our Lord’s Resurrected Body when we come to be with Him.  It will be determined by God “as He has chosen”.  We will live after the physical death of our bodies because of the unique event of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ on Easter!  That event changed all life as we knew it forever.  And we live now in both the promise and fulfillment of that reality in our lives.  It is a joy and a reality that at once looks back to that past event and on into the future as well.  It makes us at one and the same time God’s Chosen people but also an Easter people as well.  And far from being an event that we celebrate just once a year, like Christmas, we should take that reality of Easter and the Resurrection with us all 364 more days of the year if we would grow more and more into God’s image and likeness.  

One little story and I’ll be through.  There was a group of old miners who were part of the California God Rush of 1849.  At some point in their work they hit the mother load of that golden ore, but knew that they didn’t have enough supplies to mine it out of the ground.  So they had to go into town to get some.  They pledged to each other not to say a word to anyone in town, lest their secret would get out and everyone would be jumping their claim.  So they went into town and didn’t say a word about their find.  Well a few days later they went back to their claim and were astonished to see so many people following them.  They asked the people, “How did you know that we struck pay dirt?  Not one of us said anything!”  One of the group said, “Yup, that’s true.  You didn’t say a word.  But you all used to be such a grouchy group when you came to town, and this time all of you were smiling!”  It’s that same evidence of the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Promise and Fulfillment of never-ending Life, that we should all wear on our faces and in our lives.  It’s that joy that we celebrate today and for all eternity!

And now, unto God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost be ascribed all might, majesty, power, and dominion as is most justly due this day both now and forever; world without end.  Amen.