Sermon for Easter Sunday
Year C

April 8, 2007

The Rev’d Lloyd Prator
St. John’s in the Village
New York City

It happened on the first day of the week.

It happened at early dawn.

What happened was that the women who followed Jesus, the ones who had cared for him as he suffered and died, the ones who provided the customary Jewish care for the dead body—these women had an amazing, startling experience. They encountered the empty tomb.

Now this event could have happened in any number of ways. We know that the Roman authorities were concerned that someone might steal the body, so perhaps it might have disappeared that way. There are all sorts of ways in which a dead body might disappear, especially the body of a man as controversial as Jesus had been. But, the angels standing nearby pointed out that all along Jesus had said he would rise again. The angels reminded the women of what they knew that these women had heard from the lips of Jesus himself.

The Easter story goes on. In fact, in liturgical time, it goes on for another seven weeks, unfolding, unwrapping and explaining the mystery of how Jesus came to be risen from the dead and what that miracle means for those who put their faith in him. I invite you to journey with us through these Great Fifty Days of Easter to work out the implications and applications of this mysterious rising.

But, for today, we are given merely the empty tomb. And some stage setting notes. It is those to which I want to draw attention briefly today.

Easter celebrates the resurrection of Jesus. We Christians believe that in his resurrection, Jesus passed into a new order of reality, into the realm and nearer companionship of God the Father. We believe that he came from the Father and that he returns to the place from whence he came. Easter is preceded by Good Friday, in which we recall that Jesus died the worst kind of death any human being can die. His death encompasses any death that we can ever experience or imagine. His victory over death nullifies the power of death, his resurrection defeats the ultimate power of death. And, he does this for us. His victory over death is a gift he gives to us. We appropriate that gift; we receive that gift, by our baptism. In our baptism, we die by going under the waters of baptism; we are raised to new life by emerging from those waters. In baptism we participate in the paradigm of resurrection. We participate in Christ. That, in a nutshell is the Easter teaching of the Church.

The empty tomb reminds us that today is just the beginning of the story. Its implications remain to be fleshed out.

It is early dawn. It is the first day of the week.

Now there was another dawn, what we call the dawn of creation. It took place in a week, too. This is the anniversary of the dawn of the week of creation from the Genesis story. God keeps the anniversary of his first creation by offering us another creation.

What God gave us in the first creation was life; what he gives us in the second creation is life eternal.

The creation story is set in days and seasons, because it is human history that is to be the raw material of God’s self-disclosure. We are to find God amidst the struggles, the vagaries, and the complexities of the human story. Whenever we, in the name of Christ, seek to serve those in need, we are participating in god’s redeeming power turned to those who need it most. If you would really feel the power of the empty tomb, if you would lay hands on this resurrection life that God offers, find that power whenever the Church touches the lives of the sick, the poor, the lonely, any whom the world would gladly ignore and brush aside.

That is the agenda of the church, and it is written on the foolscap of time and history. It is written in the blood of human suffering, the tears of sorrow, the agony of disappointment and injustice. It is an agenda that begins in the empty tomb.

The real question posed to each of us is whether we will take our part in the resurrection agenda that Christ proposes to each of us today. The ones to decide are you and I.

It is dawn

It is the first day of the week.