Be the Resurrection

Propers: The Third Sunday of Easter, A.D. 2018 B

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

And then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.

This, brothers and sisters, is what it’s all been building towards. Creation, the Fall, the Flood. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Twelve Tribes of Israel. Moses and Pharaoh. The Canaanites, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks. The entire story of the Bible—thousands of years of mythology, history, prophecy, poetry, and promise—has led us at last to this perfect union of God and Man in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And this God-Man, out of pure and incomprehensible mercy, has swallowed up death and harrowed hell and arisen in glory up from the Tomb, specifically to forgive the very people who have murdered Him, along with the whole of this fallen world. Who and what God truly is has been forever revealed in Christ the Lord. And there is nothing about this story that is anything less than astounding, convicting, and true.

My son asked me the other day why Amish dolls have no faces, and how this goes back to the Old Testament Commandment that we make no graven images, no false idols to represent the God who is beyond all of our wildest imaginings. But that changes now, for we have seen the face of the Lord. We have seen the visible image of the invisible God. And it is none other than the face of the Risen Christ.

Think about what that means for our worldview. Think about what that means for how we are to live. No longer is our worth measured by our strength or wealth or wisdom. No longer is there a scorecard, some tally of deeds both good and bad by which we will be judged, either in this world or the next. The slate has been wiped clean. The account has been annulled. And we are judged not by our own merits in and of themselves, but by the merits and mercies of Jesus Christ freely poured out for the world. We are not given merely a means of salvation, but the Savior Himself, in His flesh and His blood!

Our God is the Author of Life, who creates and sustains all things out of love. Everyone, everything that exists, no matter how twisted or broken, no matter how wicked or foul, exists only and always in love. If God were to cease loving us even for one moment, one heartbeat, we would cease to exist altogether. Not only would we no longer be, but we would never have been at all. Creation itself is a continual act of love. If you are here, God must love you.

Think about what this means for forgiveness and compassion. Hitler was loved by God. ISIS was loved by God. Satan was loved by God. Their sins were not! God never intended for them to be evil, for them to be cruel. He hated their wickedness. But they were made good, made in love, and because of that we must imagine that there is hope even for the most hopeless of souls—even for a world that often seems so broken, so fallen, so godawful tragic that we cannot imagine that it will be saved.

In a world still wracked by wars, by genocide, by starvation and disease, by governments that do not care and populaces divided against themselves—who could possibly set such horrors right? Who could heal our depthless wounds? None other than the One who has known these horrors in His own flesh. None other than the Crucified and Risen God, who has entered into the wounds of the world, and taken them into Himself as His own.

How can the life, death, and Resurrection of one Man save the world? How can Easter, dear Christians, bring us hope? Only by showing us a love that outlives death. Only by pouring out upon us a mercy so unmerited, so unexpected, so unbelievable, that we cannot do other but die to ourselves and be reborn, resurrected, in Him. Where is God when the world cries out, when man kills his brother, when children go hungry? He is right here, in us, in our wounds, in our suffering, in our despair!

And He is telling us to go, go boldly, out into the world, out to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, to denounced injustice and proclaim forgiveness, to live burning with the unquenchable fire of truth within us and to wage peace, peace everlasting, for the whole of the world and to every child and beast of the earth. This is how God deals with the problem of evil: not by snapping His fingers and forcing us to be good, but by sending us out in Him to take the wounds of the world upon ourselves, upon His Body, proclaiming forgiveness and mercy and new life even and especially to the very people who murder Him, who murder us.

Bad things happen to good people not because it’s part of some inscrutable plan but because the world itself is broken. Humanity is fallen. And we pay the price for these sins each and every day of our mortal lives. God didn’t break the world; we did! But God has planted the seed of salvation in Christ Jesus our Lord, planted it deep within the earth along with Jesus in the Tomb. And as Jesus is Risen from the dead, so now salvation has arisen! And it is growing, spreading, inexorably as the tendrils of a living vine, dying and rising all over this world, bringing fruit and life and joy and shade to the burning deserts of our despair. And it isn’t done yet—there may be a long way to go—but our future is secure, the future of humanity and the whole of the cosmos, in the love of God.

The Resurrection continues in us, here, today. The Scriptures are fulfilled in us, here, today. For we sainted sinners are given in grace the Spirit of Christ, the Blood of Christ, the Body of Christ, in word and water, bread and wine. And if we have Jesus’ Spirit, Jesus’ Body, Jesus’ Blood—what does that make us? It makes us Jesus, still alive, still at work, still forgiving and feeding and healing, still dying and rising for the life of the world.

We are part of the story now. We are part of the Word. The day will come when Christ will hand His Kingdom over to the Father and God at last will be all in all. On that day there will be no more lies, no more suffering, no more death. On that day all will rise in body and soul, purged of our sin, the darkness burned out of us, and we shall shine with the peerless glory of the Son. Not one speck of Creation will be left behind. Not one atom of what God has made shall be forsaken. And the love of God will burn away all that is not good and true and beautiful, calcifying us into what we were each and all meant to be from before the beginning of the world.

Our job, brothers and sisters, is to take this reality, this sure and certain promise, and spread it out into the world, salting the earth with the Gospel, raising the dead with the truth of Christ who has overcome the world.

All at the last may be forgiven. All at the last may be healed. All at the last shall rise. Go therefore and be Easter for the world, dear Christians, until there is not one iota of Creation that has not been bathed in the Light and Truth and Love of Christ.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.