Easter 2025 - Trinity Lutheran, Calgary

 Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-25; 1 Cor 15:19-26; Luke 24:1-12

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I have great sympathy for those women who gathered at the tomb of Jesus early in the morning on the third day. Mary Magdalene, who deeply loved Jesus, Joanna, whom scholars believe was healed by Jesus and was the same woman, Junia, whom Paul mentions in the letter to the Romans, Mary the mother of James, one of the apostles, and “the other women.” (In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, these women are called the Myrrhbearers, and they include Martha and Mary, Lazarus’ sisters.) These were faithful women who followed Jesus as closely as the twelve apostles, who were likely with him at the last supper, and who stayed at the cross and watched him die. As they approached the tomb, they carried with them the spices used for preparing the corpse for entombment. They saw Jesus die, and they were prepared for the reality of that death. They also must have carried in their hearts those feelings that we all have at the death of a loved one - feelings not only of grief, but of uncertainty and discouragement, full of questions. How will we live without him? What will our days look like? It isn’t possible to go back to living the way we did before we met him, but how shall we go forward? Will more of our brothers be arrested and crucified? Where is the hope for carrying on? Their certainty that they had lost someone would have been felt just as strongly as their fear of an uncertain future that was about to unfold.

Interestingly, this is the same situation that the writer of Acts found himself in as he crafted Peter’s speech to the people at Pentecost. The story of Acts is written in retrospect, as a way to tell the story of the birth of the church. But a really important piece of this story that most Christians don’t know is that it was written shortly after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and, in fact, the entire city. For Jesus and his followers, the Temple was the place where the spirit of God dwelled amongst the people. It was God’s actual home on earth, where people would go at least twice a year to worship and to receive God’s blessings. It had stood for over 500 years, and was the Second Temple to have been built, with the first being there for 500 years before that. So, picture it, for over 1000 years, the people of Israel had experienced God literally dwelling among them in Jerusalem, and then, over the course of just a few weeks, Roman soldiers completely destroyed the Temple and all of the walls around it, burned Jerusalem to the ground, and killed 3/4s of the occupants in the city, including women and children. Not only were the people destroyed, but so was the place where God dwelled. Jews, including those who followed Jesus, were absolutely devastated. What was the future for them? How would they worship? How could God find them? Who were they as a people? The Book of Acts was written in this context - in the midst of loss and grief and uncertainty which mirror the women at the tomb.

It is a story we are also living. It seems that whatever context we consider, whether it is the church or the world, this congregation or the larger ELCIC, we are experiencing a massive shift - the loss of what we have known and how we have lived, and uncertainty over what the future holds and how we might continue as a people. As you know, in the church, there simply aren’t enough pastors to serve every congregation, at least not in the current ways we have congregations configured. Too many people have lost access to that weekly encounter with the grace of God in the body and blood of Christ in Holy Communion. People are somehow not experiencing the call to go to seminary and become pastors - this year and next the seminary will not graduate any pastors, and last year we graduated only one. We, both the seminary and the church, do not know what the future holds. It is uncertain. We know that the life of the church as we knew it in the past is dead, it is impossible to go back, but we wonder what would it look like to go forward? What might new life look like?

 I don’t have an answer for you, not one that will give anybody a complete and unshakeable sense of certainty for the future. But, neither did the angels whom God sent to appear to the grieving women at the tomb, nor did Peter when he was talking to the people gathered for Pentecost. All I can tell you is what the angels told the women at the tomb, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? [Jesus] is not here, but has risen.” In the gospel of Luke, written, by the way, in the same context as the book of Acts, the angels didn’t tell the women where to find Jesus, or describe what he looked like, or offer any vision for how the women and the others were to continue on with their lives. All they said was, Jesus is risen.

That was enough for the women. That proclamation was enough for them to leave their grief behind, to leave their fears for the future behind, and to go forward. Very likely still uncertain about how things would look, but certain that God was again in their midst.

That same certainty exists for Peter. The writer of Acts wanted to convey to those Christian Jews who were grieving the loss of God’s Spirit in the Temple that God was still with them, in the Spirit of Christ who was raised from the dead. And so Peter proclaims to the people that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, and that as the Spirit of the Lord is among the people now, thus is God. The writer of Acts, through Peter, was equally uncertain about how exactly the future would look, but his proclamation that God was with the people was enough for them to leave their grief over the Temple’s destruction behind and to go forward, becoming the church.

This same Easter proclamation is made to us today. Christ is risen, God is among us. There are many things that are uncertain about the future - we do not know what the country will look like after the election. We do not know who will be elected National Bishop of the ELCIC this summer or where they will guide the church. We do not know the future of this congregation, or any other congregation without a pastor. At the seminary, we do not know what the future will look like for teaching and forming people for ministry. BUT. Christ is risen, God is among us. Today. Now. Christ is among us in the Easter proclamation, in the hymns we sing together, and in the body and blood of Christ that we will share together this morning in Holy Communion. This is why we sing Alleluia.

I want to end with the reminder that Easter is a season, not just a day. Over the next seven weeks of Easter, you will hear the stories of Jesus’ appearances to the disciples and others, more details of how God’s presence with us takes form, and more examples of what God’s future for us looks like. Things will become more clear. And God will continue to send messengers to proclaim that Christ is risen and God is with us, not where we have seen him in the past, but in a new place and in new ways. Today, on this first day of Easter, simply rest in the joy and amazement that God is with us, that Christ is risen, that new life has begun. Thanks be to God, Amen.