A homily for Easter Sunday, the Resurrection of the Lord, April 4, 2021
Acts 10:34a, 37-43, Col 3:1-4, Jn 20:1-9
Did our jaws drop this morning? They should have.
Did we shout “Alleluia!” for its own sake, not just because it was in a prayer we had to say at church? We should have.
Did we greet each other with “Christos anesti! Alethos anesti!” or another culturally appropriate way of saying Christ is risen; truly, he is risen? We must.
At a time when the miracles of sunshine and spring flowers and COVID vaccines make us stop, with our mouths agape, and proclaim hosannas, we really need to stop, with our mouths agape, and proclaim hosannas to the creator and sender of miracles on the day we celebrate the greatest miracle ever.
Life eternal.
Salvation.
A place in heaven prepared for each of us, prepared specially and especially.
All wrapped up in the miraculous gift of Jesus Christ’s rising from the dead. A profound event that we believe had never been done before and has not been done since.
An exciting, awesome and awe-inspiring event.
Awesome in more ways than a hamburger or a blockbuster movie could ever be, despite the TV commercials.
Now, it’s absolutely true that we live in an age of miracles. We carry phones that have 120 million(!) times more computing power than the Apollo 11’s moon mission guidance system — and the 1969 mission to the moon was a miracle in itself. We can use computers to conjure up tall blue people on alien worlds or jazz pianists stuck between Heaven and Earth. We can share our thoughts and dreams and photos and movies via the internet with any and all of our 7.8 billion brothers and sisters worldwide in a matter of seconds.
And that’s barely a taste. We could spend hours listing the gifts of science and technology and medicine and art and and and … .
But because we have so much, and because we expect that we will have more — because miracles happen every day — some of us have become blasé about the original miracles that undergird our lives. Miracles that should awe us. Miracles that should make us deeply grateful.
Our souls, our bodies, our lives in this country at this point in history.
Our fellow humans.
Animals, vegetables and minerals.
Mother Earth.
The universe — or universes — beyond our sight and beyond our comprehension.
Our Triune God, by whose sheer willpower all of this came to be and continues to exist.
We think of Christmas as the holiday with the gifts, but at Easter, we receive the greatest gift of all. Sin and death are conquered. Humanity’s debt, our debt to God is paid. The path home to God has been blazed for us and chronicled for us in Scripture, challenging us to make this world a just and peaceful place en route to the next life of eternal peace and joy.
The Easter miracle of the Resurrection of Jesus — a gift beyond comparison — is, simply, awesome.
This Easter season, let’s allow ourselves to be awed by it.
