Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen, Indeed! So we say and repeat each and every Easter Sunday. We might say those three words are the ultimate Easter sermon. However, a word of caution to any of my colleagues who might read these words I am writing.
Some years ago when I was a pastor in Colorado, a Lutheran colleague of mine decided to have a rather short Easter sermon for what I recall was his second Easter with them. When it came time in the Easter Sunday worship for the sermon, he stood up, said, “Christ is Risen!” After a brief pause he then said, “Amen” and sat down. On to the hymn of the day! That was his Easter sermon.
Whatever point he was trying to make was lost on his congregation. About a year later he was no longer their pastor.
While it is certainly true those three words sum up Easter and the Christian faith, there is a bit more to say. There is a reason there is not one Easter sermon repeated yearly. There is not one life, one world that is the same each year. The sameness is worry, anxiety, joy, sin, goodness, natural beauty and natural disasters and all that human life and nature bring to the world.
Now we are dealing with Ukraine, political division that is quite frightening, on-going school shootings met with indifferent thoughts and prayers and no action, tornadoes, floods, and our own personal situations. This world and our lives could use a little rising. This world and our lives could use a little new life. I don’t know what next Easter will bring, but I don’t have to be a fortune teller to say it will bring a world and lives that need rising and new life.
So, we pastors stumble and mumble, we try our best to do something with this Easter story to bring it into the current day and present lives. We are inadequate to the task to be sure, but somehow God finds ways to use some of our efforts to shed some new light and bring some new life into dark and deadly places. This is God’s sermon each and every Easter. We might even say this is God’s sermon each and every day as God continues to break into our lives and make them new.
Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen, indeed! Amen!