EASTER SUNDAY

April 4, 2010

St. Augustine Anglican Church

“Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth.”

The Rev. Gerald Parks +

          Popular folk wisdom has it that no matter how hard life is, or no matter how badly we feel, “It’s better than the alternative.”  We say that more or less automatically, and we hear it all the time, along with other empty phrases such as, “Have a nice day.”  But what is the alternative, and why is life better?  If we believe that death is some kind of penalty we pay for living, or that death is the end of living, then yes, life is always better than death and should be vastly and universally preferred over it.  We fear death: it is the great unknown.  And yet, Easter shows us that birth and death are really only opposite sides of the same coin, and until we experience them, each is unknown.  Life as we have known it in this world may cease, but the Resurrection of Jesus Christ proves that, through Him, death is only a portal through which we enter into eternal life in the glory of God.

          When we speak of the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead, we reveal the central truth of our faith.  It is the single most important event in the whole history of mankind, as told by the accounts of witnesses in Holy Scripture.  These witnesses not only saw the death of the man Jesus, and His empty tomb, but also saw Him and spoke with Him after His death and before His Ascension into Heaven, along with hundreds of others.  It is an event so powerful in its meaning that early Christians in countless numbers chose martyrdom over renouncing it.

          Yet, to the world, such a thing is impossible – it couldn’t have happened: the dead are dead, and that is the end of it.  And if they are right, what value is our faith?  St. Paul wrote, “And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.” (2 Cor. 15:14)  This was from a man who had personally witnessed the risen Lord, and spoken with Him.  St. Paul knew the truth of the Resurrection, and it changed him from being a nonbeliever and persecutor of Christians into a witness for Christ.  And the conviction of that witness was so strong Gentiles were converted to its cause wherever he preached.

          In today’s Epistle (Col. 3:1-4), St. Paul presents a consolidated version of the three themes of Easter: the Resurrection, the Ascension and the Second Coming of Christ.  For those of us used to reading Paul’s lengthy and rambling discourses, often with sentences running on to what seems like forever, it is a refreshingly direct statement of the great mysteries of our faith: He is risen, and if He is risen then we are all risen with Him.  And Paul tells us, “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above.” (Col. 3:1)

          But seeking those things which are above is no easy task in this world; it never has been.  From the early beginnings of Christianity, and even more so today, there have been those who, for whatever their motivations, have tried to inject a far different version of the Easter story into the discourse than was told by the witnesses of those long ago events.  Rationally and calmly they explain to the gullible among us that, although Jesus may have been a great teacher and a remarkable man, He was just a man.  And men do not come back from death; therefore, the whole story must be made up and part of a plot instigated by the apostles and disciples of Jesus, who sought to promote a new religion to their own gain.  That the main proponents of this cynical theory today are known by the unlikely name, The Jesus Project, should not be surprising.  Nor should it be surprising that from among them comes the exclusive use of BCE, or “Before the Common Era” to replace BC, or “Before Christ;” and CE, or “Common Era” to replace AD, or “Anno Domini – Year of our Lord.”  Their wish is to reduce all spiritual things to a “common” level by rewriting history and Holy Scripture; and their primary aim seems to be to remove all things believed about Christ to their lowest “common” denominator.  In other words, their whole purpose is to convince the world that the story of Jesus was not the single most important event in all history, but, if they are believed, a mere footnote to history.

          The difficult thing about the truth of history for those who would change it is the consistency of the stories of those who witnessed and lived it.  Millions of people, for thousands of years, have believed the Gospel stories of Jesus’ Resurrection, because they are the simple, straight forward accounts of witnesses to it, and they are all the same.  A story of the magnitude of our Lord’s Resurrection could not have survived, let alone flourished, if those telling it had not been consistent, or their motives were doubtful.  And the truth is as it is found in Holy Scripture: Jesus was arrested, condemned and put to death as an enemy of the state, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven.  And He will come again in glory, at the end of time.

          Doubters and liars will always come and go, but St. Paul’s call to us today is the same as it was to first century Christians, “Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth.” (Col. 3:2)  Recently we have seen firsthand and personally the spiritual failures and moral decay of those who preach the new “theology of disbelief.”  And we have also witnessed (and do witness) a society so in love with itself and with the acquisition of material things that it forgets God and the worship due Him.  Such things go hand in hand.  But if Easter teaches us anything it should be this: Keep your eyes on the Risen Lord, who loves us and waits for us; “Set your affections on things above, not on things of the earth.”