Here is how I am ending this morning's sermon:
Despite the shadows of death that darken our world, if you look carefully you see Easter resurrection breaking out everywhere. In the boisterous laughter of a child rollicking with the family dog. In the bright purple crocus, blooming azaleas, yellow daffodils, pink dogwoods, and white pear blossoms that will hopefully soon paint the neighborhood in an extravaganza of spring-time color. You can catch a glimpse of the resurrection in a leisurely dinner with friends. In the human creativity of art and architecture, film and music, painting and photography. In the self-sacrificial goodness of so many people the world over. Oh Yes, Resurrection life is in the air.
You can see powerful glimpses into the resurrection when an group of people in a small NJ town make friends with a young man in Kampala Uganda to help him work with street kids, or in a bunch of people who are just as busy as the next person taking time to collect and fill bags of food for hungry neighbors or collect clothes for the working poor or who sleep on the floor in a church so homeless families can have a safe place to stay. You can catch a glimpse of the resurrection in the folks work in the background to help us conserve energy and help protect our planet. You can catch glimpses of resurrection when people put on the coffee and set the tables for fellowship each sunday morning or spend their saturday nights getting ready to teach Sunday school. You an even see the power of the resurrection when people with strong and disparate theological opinions can sit at the same table and share in common fellowship knowing neither of them has a corner on the truth.
God raised Jesus from the dead, and in so doing He vanquished sin, death and the devil and inaugurated a new reign known as the Kingdom of God.
Is this message believable? In the everyday sense of the word, no, it is unbelievable. Paul admitted that many people in his day judged it scandalous and foolish (1 Corinthians 1:23), but he still staked his very life on the belief that it was true. Festus, the Roman governor of Judea under the emperor Nero, ridiculed Paul as insane (Acts 26:24). When his preaching provoked a riot at Ephesus, Luke's words from Acts written back then could as easily characterize today: "Some were shouting one thing, some another" (Acts 19:32).
I believe the original apostolic believers, and stand on the shoulders of other believers across time and space, who have believed, confessed and taught that God raised Jesus from the dead. So with Christians throughout the world Let us join the chorus, "Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!"
