I asked a question the other day of the boys up at Wellesley College. I said, ‘If Christmas Day is on December 25, on what day is Easter Day?’ You could say it was a trick question, but the boys weren’t fooled. In fact, their answers were almost correct. ‘On the full moon’, one boy said; and ‘on Sunday’ said another.

The right answer is extremely complex and confusing. It was determined by a group of church leaders in the fourth century, and is more or less related to the first full moon after our autumnal equinox, which is on either March 20 or 21. What this means, is that Easter Day can fall anytime between March 22 and April 25. Next year it falls on April 12 (to my relief) and in 2038 on April 25!

I then asked the boys another question. I asked them what it was Christians were celebrating on Easter Day. Again, their answers were more on less right, some more so than others! On Easter Day, I told them, we celebrate how Jesus, three days after his death on a cross, rose from the dead. 

Now, most of us don’t think twice when such a statement is said. We take it for granted. Some of us have been brought up in the church, attending Christmas and Easter services for as far back as we can remember. But when you stop to think about it, you have to admit it is a bizarre claim to make - Christ is risen!

I certainly have never met anyone who has risen from the dead. It is outside of my experiences. And yet, the Christian faith is founded on this claim, and our belief in resurrection is central to our worship and to the lives we seek to live.

So is it, the resurrection of Christ, a piece of fiction or is it fact?

Before I attempt to answer this question let me take us back a step. There are some things about Jesus we know for certain, which only a few would dispute.

We know Jesus lived.

The letters of Paul and the writings of the Gospels are pretty clear about this. And if we want more evidence, there are numerous other historical documents which speak about his life. For example, Josephus, the Jewish historian of the first century, talks about James ‘the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ.’ And Tacitus and Pliny the Younger tell of the movement that grew around him.

So we know Jesus lived. But we also know he made an impact on his world.

Jesus was an impressive speaker. He could keep a crowd captivated by his stories and his teaching. He told them how to live, and showed them what God was like. The evidence of this is all around. We are here today, in this place, because of what he said and did. And one just needs to think of stories like the Good Samaritan and the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount to know how much his words have influenced many down through the centuries.

So we know Jesus lived. We know he made a difference.
And we know that he died a gruesome death.

The Gospels tell us how Jesus was sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate, along with two criminals. This is what we remember on Good Friday. And we can accept this, because we hear of many, in our own day, people who stand up for truth and justice, innocent people, who are silenced by the brokers of power, by those guided not by love but by the worst vices of human nature.

But, Easter Day, for Christians, is a day of celebration. It is a time, when, after the solemnity of Lent and the despair of Holy Week, our hearts are filled once more with hope and with joy, as we join our voices to proclaim: ‘Christ is risen’.

They are wonderful words to say, but I think you would agree, unlike what we know of Christ’s life and death, resurrection is a hard concept for us to grasp. It is beyond our experiences. And even for the early disciples, those who first spoke of having seen and heard and touched the risen Christ, it was a difficult idea to put into words. We read how Mary at first did not recognize Jesus when she went to the tomb and found it empty. She thought he was the gardener.

And, in our Gospel, we heard how Jesus appeared to the disciples gathered in a locked room; and then later, how he spoke to Thomas, the one who doubted, and then invited him to reach out and touch his hand and his side. And so, Jesus was more than a ghost or a resuscitated corpse. He was continuous with the person he was before his death, and yet not immediately recognizable. He was risen from the dead, and much more than a disembodied soul.

I am the first to admit this is difficult for us to comprehend. But although, we may wonder what really did happen on that first Sunday of Easter, we do know something extraordinary did happen. That is why Easter is a season and not just a day. Jesus’ death left the disciples afraid. But his appearance to them on the third day transformed their tears into joy, and their fear into courage.

It is as we heard in our reading, from the Acts of the Apostles, their experience gave them a boldness to speak out, to tell others of what Jesus had done and said, and to continue the work he had begun, for ‘God raised him to life again.’

And this has been the claim of the church for close to two thousand years.
It is what we proclaimed this morning - ‘Christ is risen’, we said - and every time Christians gather, and where-ever they do, in the breaking of bread, in the sharing of peace, in the caring for the sick, we proclaim this message again.

But what, you may ask, does it all mean?

Let me suggest, in a nutshell, this is what Easter means for me:

You can’t exhaust the love and life of God. It is as simple as that.
Love, in the end, is stronger than hate; goodness is stronger than evil; and life is stronger than death.

That’s the message we proclaim each Sunday. That’s the hope we express in our worship and in our service to others. That’s the life we seek to embody in our work and our play and our relationships. And that’s the reason for our joy.

And so as an Easter people, let us keep the work of Christ alive!
Alleluia! Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

A sermon preached at St Alban’s on Sunday March 30 2008
(Acts 2:14a, 22-32; 1 Peter 2:3-9; John 20:19-31)

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