Easter sermon

What are we hoping for, expecting, on Easter.

Easter Morning 2012

Transcribed from a sermon given

By The Rev. Valerie Hart

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

We have a pretty good idea about why Mary Magdalene went to the tomb. The one she loved and had been following was dead. He hadn’t had a proper burial and she wanted to anoint his body. We can understand that if someone has died and hasn’t had his body prepared we would want to go and do what we can. That was her intention. What she expected was to find a stone rolled across the front of the tomb and a decaying body within.

But I ask you today, what brought you here this morning? Some of you I know are here because you come to church every Sunday morning. It’s just what you do. And I’m sure that some of you are here because someone you care about a lot wants you to be here with them. And then there is everything in between. Some of you may be here because Easter is an important time for you. Others may be here because it just seems like the thing to do and you don’t quite know why you are here but it seems like the right place to be. Each one of us got up this morning and made the decision to come here, expecting something.

Maybe you expected to have some great music which I trust we are going to continue to experience. Some of you may have come because you love the Easter decorations, the feel of Easter and the smell of Easter lilies. Some of you may have come hoping you will hear some words of wisdom. Some of you may have come to see friends. Some of you may have come expecting to be a little bit bored. We all are here for a reason.

What happens to Mary Magdalene is not what she expected. The stone was rolled away; Jesus’ body wasn’t there. It was nothing like what she expected, so she began looking, searching. She was looking for was Jesus, that is she was looking for his body. So, even when he was standing right there she didn’t immediately recognize him.

What are you looking for? What are you looking for today? No matter what you think was the reason you are here, there is something that you are looking for – something that you are yearning for. Maybe you want a little bit of a sense of peace. Maybe you are looking for hope. Maybe you are looking for a break from unending worry. Maybe you are looking for some joy. Maybe you are looking for something to change your life. What is it that you are looking for?

Sometimes it is hard to put a word to what it is that we are yearning for. But we all have those deep soul desires. Something that we are looking for, searching for.

For Mary Magdalene it was Jesus. But what she found shocked her. What she found was so amazing she couldn’t believe it at first. She didn’t recognize him until he spoke to her.

We have to remember that no one, no one at time period, expected a human being to die and then three days later be up walking around. It was not part of anyone’s expectations. Even those who believed in a life after death, did not believe it could be a body walking around. Not the Jewish people, not the pagans, not the Romans, no one expected someone who was dead to be up and walking around.

Read today of several different ways that people encountered the risen Christ. We heard Peter talking about his own experience of the resurrected Christ. We have Paul telling the story of how first Christ appeared to the disciples, and then to over 500 at one time, and then to James and much later, much later, Jesus appeared to Paul. This appearance was after the ascension, after Pentecost. There was already a Christian church, because Paul was persecuting the church. He was trying to destroy it because he didn’t believe it.

Paul was riding on a donkey on his way to Damascus when something knocked him off his Donkey and blinded him. While he was lying there on the ground he had an experience of seeing Jesus. It changed his life. He describes it as having been the most recent one to have seen Christ. He didn’t say I had a feeling that Christ was there. He didn’t say I had a dream that I saw Christ. He saw the risen Christ and it changed his life.

Now these people who had the experience of the presence of the risen Christ didn’t say “I believe that Christ is risen.” They said, “I know that Christ is risen.” When you have seen something yourself you don’t believe that it is there, you know that it is there. You can be told by someone else about something and you can say that I believe that what they are telling me is the truth. But once you’ve seen it for yourself, you no longer believe it because someone else told you, it becomes the truth to you. It becomes a fact.

There are a lot of people who don’t say they believe that Christ is risen they know it. What we say at the beginning of our service is not Jesus was raised from the dead as if it happened long ago. What we say is “Christ is risen”, right now, today. Christ is Risen. The presence of the risen Christ is as much real today as it was on that road to Damascus.

What are we looking for? What are we really looking for? I think we all are searching for the same thing that Mary Magdalene was. She was searching for Jesus. We are searching and yearning to know that risen presence. There is something within us that has brought us here today, something that has brought us here today that says I need an experience of the risen Christ.

Those experiences can look very different. Some people experience the risen Christ as a still small voice inside that they can barely hear. Some people experience the risen Christ as something that is so powerful they almost feel like they have been knocked off their donkey (to put it politely). Some people may experience the risen Christ in the face of another person.

My prayer today is that everyone gathered here today has an experience of the risen Christ. You may have had it this morning with the glorious sunrise, you may have had it as you walked into the church and you saw the decorations. You may experience it in the music, or in the readings, or in the face of someone sitting near you. Perhaps you’ll experience the risen Christ when you see the children come in. They are going to be carrying a cross with flowers. Maybe, maybe your experience of the risen Christ will be while the children are looking for Easter eggs – or when we share in the bread and wine and remember that Christ asked us to remember him by breaking bread and blessing wine.

My prayer is that each one of us get a glimpse of the living Christ, the Christ that is risen, the Christ that is here with us, and that that glimpse will answer whatever it is that you are searching for, and change your life and make it so that you no longer say “I believe that Jesus was resurrected from the dead” but you can feel in the depths of your being that you know that Christ is risen and present with us today.

Alleluia, Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!