Sermon for Easter Sunday, April 4, 2021

“God’s new creation begun at Easter will not be foiled by pandemics … Christ has over come it all.” 

Let us bow our heads in prayer. Holy and gracious God, Risen Christ, we give you thanks for your presence in this time and place, and within each one of us gathered here and also in our own homes.  Help us now to open our minds, our hearts, our whole lives, to receive the gift of your living Word for us this day; and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.

I don’t know about you but as I was thinking about this morning and preparing, I thought how beautifully different this Easter is from last Easter.  You might recall last Easter we were still very much in a lockdown. Our service was pre-recorded and we certainly did not have, obviously, these people in pews, and we did not have the choir that we have today either.  So we have come here today, especially, to celebrate – to celebrate in many ways the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

The significance of Easter Day, actually, is beautifully summed up in one sentence from this morning’s Collect Prayer. We prayed: “Lord of life and power, through the mighty resurrection of your Son, you have overcome the old order of sin and death and made all things new in him” – overcome the old order of sin and death, and have made all things new.  That sums up in one sentence what this day is all about.

But what does it mean to overcome this “old order of sin and death” and “make all things new?” Where does it factor into our living history? While we don’t really know what life was like in the middle east 2,000 years ago, it still seems, as we look around our world today, that there is still a lot of sin and death. So how is this statement about “making all things new in him” reflected in reality? How is it true, and not just in a kind of a religious sense, but a real lived-out truth? Today’s Scripture readings actually provide an excellent map to get us there. But we have to start with the end first, and go backwards.

Even though the First Reading from the prophet Isaiah is the oldest by far of today’s three Scripture readings by at least 600 years; it actually describes the end first – the future that we are moving towards – and it uses a picturesque metaphor of a banquet to do that.  Here’s a what we read, “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-matured wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-matured wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death for ever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces.” It describes the end – the future we’re moving toward – all of humanity at peace with God, and with each other. And it refers to God bringing wars to an end – bringing everyone together in harmonious relationship. God will remove everything that separates us from God, and from each other – even death itself.

The Easter Canticle that we sang in place of the Psalm is drawn from the Book of Revelation – the last book of the New Testament where it describes heaven and the new creation on earth. And it uses the imagery of the risen Christ as the “lamb”, like a new kind of Passover lamb, a symbol of deliverance and freedom and victory! So this, too, is a picture of the end-times toward which we are moving. 

Well next, we move from the end times back to the first decade after Jesus’ death and resurrection. You might say well, “Wait a minute – what about 2021?” We’ll come back to 2021. Let’s go back to the first century first.  That Second Reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Peter, who is a very-much Jewish Christian, has assumed that Jesus Christ is the Messiah for the Jews. But through some dreams and visions that he has had from God, he’s been called to visit a gentile or non-Jew – a Roman Centurion. And when he does he is blown away by what he experiences!  The Risen Christ is instructing him to include Gentiles as part of Christ’s people. Luke writes it in this way: “Then Peter began to speak to them: ‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent … preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all’.”  This is as much a conversion for Peter as it is a conversion to Christ for the Centurion. It is an early sign that God is doing something new – breaking down the barrier between Jew and Gentile, which was huge! It existed for over a millennium.

And then, finally, we go back to the biblical event the pinnacle event itself – the resurrection of Jesus as described in John’s Gospel. This account is written probably about 60 years after the event itself. Now on one hand, with our rational minds, we might say, ‘I wonder how historically accurate it is after 60 years?’ But on the other hand, oral history, that in fact describes truth, tends to get better at describing that truth over time. For John’s Gospel, the resurrection of Jesus Christ – Easter – is literally a new creation – potentially of everything!  And let me lay that open for us when we compare the account I just read from John, chapter 18, with the first creation story from Genesis and see how the parallels are amazing. As an aside, just even the beginning of John’s Gospel in chapter 1, verse 1 - it begins exactly like Genesis does. “In the beginning …”, and then John goes on to talk about the incarnate Word.

So let’s look at today’s Gospel reading. I invite you to follow, if you care to, in your service bulletin on page 5 – that’s where the Gospel Reading appears. At the beginning of the Genesis story God begins creation on what would become the first day.  John’s story says that Mary goes to the tomb on the first day of the week. And like the Genesis story, it is dark. Keep in mind that if this is truly a new creation, no one from the old creation will understand it – including Mary. And so Mary Magdalene sees the stone rolled away, but does she conclude that Jesus is alive? No. She concludes that someone has stolen Jesus’ body. She runs – she tells Peter and the other disciple, and they run to the tomb. And they see the grave clothes left behind but they don’t know what to make of it. And John says, “They return to their homes.”

But Mary goes back to the tomb, weeping.  Now remember – “tears” are part of this creation. Tears are not in the fullness of the new creation. In the Isaiah reading it says that God will wipe away all the tears from the faces. Mary looks inside the tomb. She sees two angels sitting where Jesus’ body had been laid – one at the head and one at the feet. It is a familiar image – the two cherubim in the holiest part of the Temple – at either end of the ark of the Covenant which symbolizes God’s presence. And those two angels simply ask her, “Why are you weeping?” Mary still thinks Jesus’ body has been stolen.  She says she doesn’t know where he’s been taken. And then she turns and sees the risen Jesus but she doesn’t know him – doesn’t recognize him.  And so she assumes he’s the gardener. And back to the Genesis account of creation – humanity initially was created in a garden and Adam, the first man, tills the soil in the garden. He is a gardener. Jesus, the new Adam, the first one of the new creation, is now present in that garden.

So Mary, though, not recognizing him, forcefully challenges the gardener to tell her where he’s taken Jesus’ body. Now 10 chapters earlier in John’s Gospel, Jesus describes himself as ‘the good Shepherd’. Jesus says that his sheep will know his voice and will follow him when they hear it. So what happens?  Jesus calls her by name - the whole idea of ‘naming’ is wrapped up with Adam in the first creation. And Mary instantly recognizes him and shouts with delight, “Teacher!” Her eyes are opened. She becomes part of the new creation at that moment! And so she confidently tells the other disciples, “I have seen the Lord!” – the first apostolic witness to God’s new creation in the risen Christ. So hopefully the author of John’s Gospel has made it abundantly clear that the resurrection of Jesus Christ – Easter - begins God’s new creation. And Jesus begins the new humanity.

Now we’ve gone from the end times back to about 30 CE. But what about 2021? That’s where we are. What about us – our world? Lots about it doesn’t look much like a new creation, and that’s because God is not finished yet! And we might think, ‘Well, okay, but some things seem to be getting worse over time – climate change, Covid pandemic, missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, - that’s because we tend to think in a linear fashion. We think of things progressing from worst, to less-worse, to a little better, and so on. But clearly the path of new creation in Christ is not linear. In fact, it was almost 300 years before the Christian faith became legal in the Roman Empire, and some of the worst persecution didn’t happen at first. It happened in the last hundred years before that change. Sometimes the Church has not lived into the new creation. Think of the late-medieval crusades, the split of the Church into rival denominations, residential schools, anti-Semitism, racism, and so on. But the truth of Easter - the proclamation of the new creation in the risen Christ continues. It continues for us not as a visit to an empty tomb, but rather encountering Christ in the lives of other people and in ourselves; hearing Christ call our names deep within, and like Mary, recognizing the voice of the Good Shepherd. 

Well how can I or how can we be sure?  Well the quick answer is – ‘you’re here, aren’t you?’ You are here because in some way this place, this choir, this worship service, witnesses to the joyous new life – the new creation of the risen Christ – a reality which, for us, began at Easter. You see, you and I are witnesses to the reality that Christ is alive; that Christ has risen from the dead; that God is continuing the new creation in us; and that glorious banquet for all peoples – for all of creation – waits in the future.

God’s new creation will not be foiled by pandemics, or climate change, or racism, or any other social injustices, or even the selfishness that lurks within each one of us. Christ has overcome it all in and for us, and calls us to follow him in this new and glorious new creation. Hallelujah! Christ has overcome death and is making all things new. Thanks be to God!

Amen.