Easter Sunday April 2020

“Up from the grave he arose,
with a mighty triumph o’er his foes!
He arose a victory from the dark domain,
and he lives forever with his saints to reign!
He arose!
He arose!
Hallelujah, Christ Arose!

So, for you, what is the best thing about Easter?

What is your best memory?

For me it has always been the Easter worship experience, people gathering to sing great hymns about Jesus’ resurrection. I know, it sounds awfully churchy, but it’s true! I grew up in a church with a big pipe organ and big singing and we sang our hearts out on Easter!

How about for you?

Is Easter about the Easter baskets with the jelly beans, and chocolate bunnies and peeps? No complaints here, I will pay for peeps!

Or is it the gathering of family and friends to sit around a dinner table laden down with all kinds of traditional dishes? Ham perhaps?

Or perhaps it’s the Easter Egg hunt in the backyard, with real hardboiled and colored eggs, or with those plastic eggs filled with Easter treats.

Growing up in Buffalo, Easter egg hunts were always a bit dicey since on any given Easter there could be a lot of eggs trying their level best to stay hidden glowing out with their lovely dye jobs on a bed of white snow. Really easy to find most of them.

None-the-less, what is it that moves you on Easter?

Seeing the kid’s excitement and joy?

Or perhaps, what moves you is found at a deeper level, touched more by what Easter and the resurrection it commemorates means, than the celebration of spring and renewal that we often associate with it.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love the joyous delighted squeals of the kids too!

I love it when Brian and Rachel and Katie and Mary are all running around the house searching for their Easter baskets crying out in delight at all the treats they’ve found!

Oh, yeah, and grandson Noah too, although he still has no idea why he’s getting treats AGAIN!

But for me, like many of you, the real joy is deeper, and…

And this is huge, because it is perfectly matched with this year’s Easter, when the power and joy of the resurrection really out shines all other reasons for joy…

It is deeper an stronger because lots of the other reasons to feel joy are fenced off behind the safety of social distancing, and budgets that can’t handle a whole lot of loot, and in some cases, families that are dealing with the fear of what will happen to loved ones who have tested positive.

Unlike the jelly beans, resurrection is felt deep in the heart. It is the joy of seeing Jesus, the crucified one alive! It is the assurance, that no matter what, we will rise as well!

Resurrection is the delight of seeing the risen Jesus more alive than he has ever been, now in a resurrected body that is beyond death, beyond decay, beyond COVID-19!

It is the delight of knowing that no matter what is ahead for us or those we love, we like him will live again, and be fit and ready for an eternity in a new heaven and a new earth!

It is the assurance of something unseen, but very real, a future state for all of God’s faithful people, as they follow Jesus into those many mansions he has gone on ahead to prepare, just as he said.

You and I outfitted with the kind of body that will finally allow us to be fully who we were meant to be: healthy, strong, creative, energized!

Finally, full of the spirit, ready to be like the daughters and sons of God we were meant to be at creation, living fully as the adopted children of the king of kings!

The other night, at the Wednesday night Zoom Bible Study we looked at 1 Corinthians 15:35-58, where the Apostle Paul talks about the resurrection and resurrection bodies,

One of the questions was, “It is fun to fantasize about our resurrection bodies. If you could have the body you’ve always wanted, what would it be like?”

Lots of interesting answers! Charles Atlas, perhaps! A real blast from the past there! (For you babies, he was a famous body builder! Sigh!)

For my part, I said tall and thin, and perhaps with some hair.

How about you?

In the mist of all that we are challenged with, we have an amazing opportunity to think about resurrection! What it would mean for us and for all those we love to know for sure that this earthly experience is just a prelude to our eternity in God amazing presence!

To understand at the deepest level that what we face now does not define us, because we are resurrection people, and we choose to live and think and make a difference because He lives.

For He is Risen! Hallelujah and Amen.