A homily for the Resurrection of the Lord (Easter), April 9, 2023
Acts 10:34a, 37-43, Col 3:1-4, Jn 20:1-9
We Americans celebrate holidays oddly, especially holidays with religious roots.
By one measure — how much money we spend to celebrate — Christmas is way up there. The winter holidays, as retailers refer to the season, are worth three times all the other holidays combined. Christmas shopping season starts earlier and earlier, in some places overlapping the tail end of BTS (back to school, not K-pop) and overshadowing Halloween and Thanksgiving.
Halloween is no slouch in the retail advertising world, though, and supermarket chains go all out for Turkey Day.
But there’s no mega-blitz of TV commercials for Easter, Cadbury bunny auditions notwithstanding.
And that’s perfect.
We celebrate the day Jesus rose from the dead by his own divine power in far more religious ways than we do the day we celebrate his birth or the days we remember our beloved dead … or the scary ones.
People are born and people die every day. Only one man, fully human and fully divine at the same time, died but came back from the dead to let us know that death is not the final answer.
And 2,000 years later, our jaws still drop on this holiest, most solemn, most joyful day.
All of our Paschal events, timed miraculously to coincide with spring, spotlight rebirth and new life.
We ignite a fire and bless it, because Jesus is the Light of the World. We make water holy, because God’s gift of H2O gives and preserves life. We sing the word we’ve not spoken through the 40 days of Lent. We proclaim Alleluia!
We wonder: How did Jesus do that?
And in this world more and more filled with doubters and unbelievers, some people wonder: Did he do that?
We believers say yes, as we draw upon our faith to get past the modern computer-generated movie magic that makes it possible for anyone seemingly to hit a reset button and live again.
We believers say yes, because we are grateful and in awe of the gift God gave us through the Word Made Flesh.
The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, as the classic prayer states.
Just that part alone — that God’s only begotten Son got calluses on his hands and blisters and donkey dust on his feet and ate fish for breakfast or sometimes nothing at all — just the fact that God shared in human experience to better understand what it means to be one of us … that’s mind-bogglingly awesome in itself.
But over and above that, for Jesus the Christ to marinate his 300-pound cross with all the sins of humankind and then clean up Adam and Eve’s mess … well, if there ever were a genuine OMG situation, that’s it.
Oh my God, my Lord and my God.
The tomb is empty.
Jesus’ glorified body still bears the marks of the nails and the lance, and always will.
Jesus is as alive today as he was in First Century Galilee and Jerusalem.
Jesus is with us always. Especially as we continue his mission, the mission he commanded all of his disciples to carry forward.
Us. For all of us to carry forward.
Love God.
Love our neighbors as ourselves, for the love of God.
Bring justice and charity to the least among us, because we are doing that for Jesus.
Be faithful stewards of God’s creation, which belongs to our children and grandchildren (and to one-eyed rescue cats who win the Cadbury audition).
Do all this and more, to keep Jesus — XP, Chi Rho — at the center of our Paschal remembrances, to remember every day of our lives that we are an Easter people.
Alleluia!
Christos anesti! Alethos anesti!
