Episcopal Diocese of Iowa [ Sermon Easter 2007 ]

Easter Day 2007
Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Des Moines
Bishop Alan Scarfe

It goes without saying that the resurrection stands at the heart of the Christian faith. It demonstrated to the apostles that this Jesus whom they had followed and whom the religious authorities of their day had crucified was none other than the Son of God – demonstrated by the fact that he was raised from the dead. Of this they were witnesses because he appeared to them!

As the Son of God – which they understood to mean God coming among them in human form – He was to demand of humanity absolute devotion and complete obedience. What he had to say about God and our relationship to God; what he had to say about human relationships with one another; what he had to say about the true nature of worship and the religious life of the Sprit – all of these things required our full attention.

And finally, His very birth, life among us as a servant, and His death told us volumes about the nature of our Creator God and the values of the God in whose presence we all live, whether we acknowledge it or not.

His birth was among the lowly and the poor – there were no classes of people too humble for him to identify with them. None were ignored or untouched by His presence. He identified with all.

His life of healing, confronting evil, and offering signs of the Kingdom of God having come near for everyone –men and women, rich and poor, widows and children.

His death was at the hands of others, especially a religious kind of others – an innocent sacrifice and perfect example of trust in God – “into your hands I commend my spirit” were his ultimate words – that He fulfilled in one action all the efforts of religious ritual and practice to make us at One with God – with our sins forgiven and our estranged relationship with God reconciled through His personal offering.

And He had invited us all to trust in His death as being for us – an opportunity for us to die to ourselves to live for God and God’s loving purposes, by creating holy actions such as baptism for our own spiritual death and resurrection, and establishing the eucharist, by which we are reminded that His sacrificed and broken body and his blood bring us healing and forgiveness.

All of this, of course, we recite today. And every time we gather on Sundays, it is precisely because Sunday is the Lord’s Day – the Day Jesus first Rose from the dead, and appeared to His disciples!!

In His resurrection – his life continued into eternity and down the ages we cal history. Yet in so doing he was more than a person in history to whom a birth date and a date of death would be assigned. For death could not hold him, and we are witnesses to that fact.

The apostles did not ask to be witnesses. They did not expect to be such witnesses and to such an event. But they were, and ultimately they gave their own lives proclaiming what they had seen, and what it all meant.

The apostles were witnesses also that because Jesus died and was risen – they lived with a unique historical perspective. History for them included the fact that a human being died and was risen. Something extraordinary had happened in their lifetime that had never happened before and will not again.

History had an open end, it could not completely be predicted within only its own terms. And all who became believers in Jesus Christ lived with this perspective. But not only believers but everyone who would come to the light of day.

Another world had broken into this world. A world to which Jesus ascended and from which He had come and would come again.

And a world that seeks to transform this world – the world of men and women by the power of the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead.

Christians are invited to live in the strength of that same resurrecting Spirit.

So today – in a few moments- I invite you who are to be confirmed precisely into that deeper relationship with God through the Holy Spirit.

It is not just to a community of people you come – to follow or complete rules of membership – but into a connection with the Kingdom of God through an infilling of the Holy Spirit. It is into a deeper embracing of history as we understand and experience it.

“Strengthen your servant with your Holy Spirit. Empower for service and sustain all the days of their life.”

The apostles gave the rest of their lives declaring all of this. And that we sit here today means one of two things – we have heard them loud and clear and we no share their witness and experience – somehow, some here, sometime the same risen Christ has appeared to us or God has allowed Him to appear in some form before us, to become more than a word to us, and invited us to live within His Holy Spirit.

Or, we are this day in a new way or for the first time hearing and seeing such a witness and such an invitation offered to us personally. That for me, I hear Christ has come, loved, died and is risen. For my sins or burden of imperfection He offered Himself, and for my eternal purpose and prospects He offers new life through faith in Him.

St Paul sums it all up this way in his words to the Colossians, “If you are raised with Christ – set your minds on things above.” In other words – live out of a perspective that this world is not all there is – and find the freedom such a reality provides.

Take risks to embrace the impossible. Be ready to question the priorities and values of a closed system that believes that this world is all there is, rather than let a broader perspective cause you to become disengaged with this world. Become more keenly engaged because it is what the love of God compels you to do, and your larger perspective provides greater freedom to do so.

And what is more, loving, caring, healing, feeding, sheltering, sharing reconciling, saving – is everything Jesus called us to do both in his actions and his words. And as the Son of God, what He asks we must do!

In the end Christianity is not about religious and institutional Church. As much as our rituals and formal gatherings help keep us oriented to the essentials of our history and faith – it is good. When it becomes an end in itself it has lost its purpose.

For Paul goes on to say to the Colossians, "for Christ is my life.” Not an example of a good life – “MY LIFE.” He is all wrapped up in Him; hidden in Him.

This is God’s ultimate goal for us all. Set your mind on things above in this sense – be fed, led governed by His Spirit and aspirations that Christ is our life! Our very reason for being, our very source of joy and delight, our very resource of limitless possibility. This world has problems but it is carried in a broader frame of reference, and from that frame of reference we can bring to it the relief of God’s own resurrection power.

Christ is Risen. Alleluia! A message for my rejoicing! A reality for this world’s salvation!! In every sense of the word.

Amen