HE IS RISEN!
Alleluia! Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed! Alleluia!
The Lord be with you!
Every year on this morning the Church joyfully resounds with these words: Alleluia Christ is Risen!
These words are said as if they are being said for the first time. To be honest each year they are being said, for the first time because they are said with a renewed understanding of God and His Son Jesus Christ and the Cross and Resurrection and a new understanding of ourselves.
All this comes from our journey through Lent and Holy Week and as we have prepared our hearts for this day. The Day of Resurrection!
I wonder what expectations you have of this Resurrected Life. Is it nothing more than an expectation of a return to normality?
I love our Anglican Traditions but something that has always worried me is that in so many ways, we come to today and in a way breathe a sigh of relief and say – it’s done, its finished, it is accomplished, for another year – LENT Holy Week – wow intense, now it’s back to normal.
He is risen and everything is ok. NO more fasting and lamenting and grueling hours of carrying our cross – just joy and freedom and a normal life for me. Back to ordinary.
My friends the Resurrection life is anything but ordinary! Jesus raised from the dead is anything but ordinary! The empty Tomb is anything but ordinary!
What did this year’s recollection of the crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus do for you?
What has changed in your life?
What new understanding and what new desire do you have for your life?
I am going to very briefly highlight the things that the Easter story ignites in us transforms in us –
We went with Jesus into the wilderness and there we were reminded that God watches over us to fulfil his purposes – we faced our temptations and we offered ourselves to be transformed into the people of God –
repentance being a submission to the will of God for our future, not just an escape from the past
We met with Jesus in the Simon the Leper’s house and there Jesus accepted the anointing as King – that was the prophets task but the sinful woman – was the prophet…
We marched triumphantly with Jesus into Jerusalem.
We sat at the table with Jesus and had our minds transformed at the Last Supper.
Again with the washing of the feet, as we accepted the living water of Jesus’ humility.
We sat at the foot of the cross and followed Jesus to the tomb, we were baptised into his death and the hope of the resurrection and now we stand at the empty tomb and with him resurrected and ready to live LIFE!!
Alleluia He is risen he is risen indeed alleluia.
I want to wrap up our Lent and Easter journey with some of the Metanoia that is required as we change season in the life of the Church.
Mark records the women’s conversation as they were going to the tomb Mark 16: 3 and they were saying to one another “Who will roll away the stone for us?”
Their arrival at the Tomb to find the stone rolled away brings about a huge change in mindset – they went to serve the Jesus who had been – they went to serve with all the limitation of human life that had been the lot of the prophets and kings and people – the reality that death would be the end..
But the Empty tomb brings about a change in everything -we are no longer simply avoiding the sin that leads to death by repenting – we are embracing a new way of living!
Death is defeated, sin is defeated, a new way of thinking a new way of living is required – a way that moves away from avoidance – a way of thinking that is no longer focused on the though shalt not – a way that embraces the “GO.”
Life is no longer only deliberating on what has been but it is about giving ourselves to what is to be!
We as the Church need to acknowledge that we have not been a good example in this sphere – we need to embrace repentance as a new way of living not merely a departure from the old.
We have been crucified with Christ and we no longer live – for the purposes of our own well- being even our own salvation -we live for the sake of the world that Jesus came to save!
So what are we going to do as we walk away from the empty tomb.. Where are we going…
What purpose has God called us to …
Because it is that personal interaction with God. It is that personal mission that you are responding to, when added with all the other personal responses to the Resurrection – that makes a church a church…
That makes a church ready to go and preach the good news and heal the sick and raise the dead and transform unjust structures of the world and care for creation and vulnerable children and orphans and widows.
When we come out of the tomb with Jesus to live in Christ, and with Christ, and through Christ, as the body of Christ.
NO longer slaves to Sin – But children of GOD!!
Alleluia Christ is risen, and he has conquered the grave and opened the tombs and set his people free, free to worship Him in spirit and in truth – transformed by repentance!
Transformed to choose the new path that God has set for us.
The stone has been rolled away, The Tomb is empty – and the risen Christ dwells in you.
