Easter 2023
Rev Indrea Alexander
Acts 10: 34-43, Colossians 3:1-4, Matthew 28:1-1
Christ is Risen! All: He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
At dawn that first Easter day the empty tomb changed the world. The news began to spread - Christ is risen. Quietly at first, an angel or two, half a dozen women, 11 apostles, Christ is risen. The news rippled out. Tentatively, wonderingly, news that’s too good to be true - isn’t it?
They’d seen him on Friday stripped, whipped, bleeding, mocked, crucified, mortally suffering ... They’d seen him dead, thoroughly dead, and his battered, pierced body taken off the cross and placed in a sealed tomb. Risen? Could it be?
The strange rumour spread to others, to Cleopas and his wife, who headed home that Easter afternoon from Jerusalem to Emmaus. They walked the dusty road wondering, talking sadly, it couldn’t be true. A fellow traveller joined them, and they talked as they walked.
When they got near home they urged him to stay as the day was ending. And when he was at table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognised Jesus, the Christ. Living. Risen. Present. And then he was gone. And they exclaimed, “Weren’t our hearts burning within us while he was talking on the road”. And they hurried back to the disciples in Jerusalem and told them how Jesus had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
Jesus was made known to them in the breaking of the bread. Jesus is made known to us in the breaking of bread. Central to our worship is the sacramental sharing of bread.
We call it Communion—because as we share it we are in communion with Christ, with each other, and with the whole Christian church in earth and heaven throughout eternity.
We also call it Eucharist—from the Greek for thanksgiving—because we share the bread in thanksgiving for the self-giving love and glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In communal thanksgiving we remember the Christ who said, “Do this in remembrance of me”, and we enter his life and death and resurrection. We become one with Christ, we become the body of Christ living and active in the world today. And we also look forward to the perfection of the realm of God, where the victory over sin and death that was won at Easter is finally fulfilled.
And at the end of every service, we are commissioned for our role as Christ’s people, Christ’s body in the world. We are commissioned to love and serve. And like the first disciples, to bear witness to what we know.
Some claim the resurrection was purely spiritual and the miracle of new life was in the transformation of the disciples and the birth of the Church, but other authors have argued that the evidence for Jesus’ bodily resurrection is strong. A former Lord Chief Justice of England (Lord Darling) said of the resurrection: “There exists such overwhelming evidence, positive and negative, factual and circumstantial, that no intelligent jury in the world could fail to bring in a verdict that the resurrection story is true.”
However we have experienced it, the resurrection gives us the ultimate Good News story to share. God in Jesus suffered the worst the world could dish out, and responded with forgiveness, love and life victorious over sin and death. That truly is good news to share.
In todays reading from Acts, Peter had been invited to the home of a Roman centurion to share with his household about Jesus. The Bible has four gospels that spell out Jesus’ life and teaching in considerable detail. The gospel of Matthew tells the story of Jesus in 28 chapters. The gospel of Mark in 16 chapters. Luke tells it in 24 chapters, and John in 21. In the last few chapters of each gospel, the writers tell how Jesus, the Son of God, an inspirational and provocative healer and teacher, was arrested, cruelly crucified, died was buried, and then gloriously raised to new life through the power of God.
Rather than taking many chapters, Peter, in todays passage from the book of Acts, offers an extraordinarily packed telling of our redemption story. In just 10 verses it says -
Who Jesus is: Lord of all
What Jesus did: brought God’s message of peace, accompanied by healing and power
Where Jesus did it: Galilee and throughout Judea
How Jesus did it: God had anointed him with the Holy Spirit and power
That Jesus was killed: hung on a tree
That Jesus was raised to life: by God on the third day,
That the risen Jesus was seen: by people who became witnesses to his resurrection
That Jesus gave a command: that his witnesses preach and testify that Jesus is appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead.
And, importantly, the first and last of todays 10 verses from Acts tells us that Jesus offers forgiveness of sins to all who believe in him: people of every nation, without favouritism.
Nine key points of faith in 10 verses!
And the offer of forgiveness is where the death and resurrection story becomes our redemption story—Jesus offers new life, a fresh start, to all who believe in him. In the gospels, the resurrection of Christ filled his fearful, dejected friends with hope, joy and purpose. Jesus still does that for people today.
It is up to those of us who have found His hope and joy and purpose to become witnesses to the resurrection in our own time and place. We need to tell our story and tell His story, in whatever ways we can, so that others too, may come to have life, in all its fulness.
In our special Holy Week and Easter services we “tell the story” to ourselves, immersing ourselves in the annual pattern of readings from the “Hosannas!” of Palm Sunday through to the shouts of “Crucify Him!” on Good Friday, and finally to the acclamations of “Alleluia!” on Easter day.
In a more public action on Friday, about 30 people and a dog took part in our Anglican-Catholic Walk of Witness, carrying a cross for an hour from St Andrew’s Tinwald to St Stephen’s Ashburton, including alongside the busy traffic on SH1 from Lushingtons to KFC. It was good to bear witness and be seen in public. We got toots of support, and an abusive shout.
After the walk we had a solemn service of reflection at the cross, with readings, poems, singing and prayer.
There are many other ways of telling the Easter story beyond the church walls. We can given people spicy Good Friday hot cross buns, and share their connection to Jesus’ death and burial. We can give Easter eggs as a symbol of new life, or we can gift spring bulbs – and when they flower in a few months time, they are a wonderful reminder of the new life that comes from a seemingly lifeless bulb. We can give people Christian books and cards. But for many people the only way they are going to believe the Jesus story is to see it lived out in our lives, and by being introduced to the Living Christ in us and through us.
Let’s live our faith with joy this Easter. New life and hope can spring up even from a stone cold tomb.
Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!