Every year in the Before Time – pre-COVID – I would make a joke on Easter Sunday about how nice it was to see everyone I hadn’t seen since Christmas or last Easter. But seeing as I had COVID at Christmas and wasn’t even back from my medical leave last Easter, that joke kind of lost its punch this year, so on Easter Sunday I was simply happy to see everyone that I saw.
I said these words to my parish on that Resurrection Sunday, but it applies to us all, I believe. Because we made it, y’all. We actually made it. We made it through Holy Week and celebrating a full schedule for the first time in four years. We made it through Lent and those insanely long Gospel readings from John and the pangs of our fasts. We made it through outbreaks, starts and stops and restarts to our common life together. We made it through pandemic and plague. We made it through the sadness of loss and the empty spaces in our hearts where once those we loved took up residence. We made it. To be sure, brothers and sisters, this has been a Feast of the Resurrection in more ways that one. Alleluia!
As I said at the Great Vigil, everything is different now because of what Jesus did. Each year we gather to not only remember that fact but to ponder what it means for our own lives right now. Christ is alive. IS. Present tense. No longer bound to distant years in Palestine, as the hymn says. This isn’t some memorial, some day to remember an event that once took place, no, this is a lived experience, a present reality for right here and now. Death is conquered, we are free, and Christ has won the victory.
Anything is possible now. Anything. Because Jesus has done that which no one else could’ve done, and no, I’m not talking about being dead and getting back up because just a few weeks ago he raised his friend Lazarus, who was dead even longer than he was! No, what Jesus has done is that he has gone to hell and come back out the other side. That might not be a pleasant thing to ponder, Jesus going to hell. But we do believe it. Every time we reaffirm our baptismal promises or recite the Apostles Creed we declare that he has descended to the dead – or to borrow the older language of Rite I and the Prayer Books of years gone by, he descended into hell. And let me tell you, if Jesus can go to hell and come back out the other side, then what in the world is there that cannot be done, huh?! What is it that is impossible now that Jesus has gone to hell, grabbed Adam and Eve by the hands, pulled them up out of their graves, told everyone there, “Come on y’all, you’re free now!” and locked the doors of hell from the inside?! The fact that you are all still standing after everything we’ve been through is a testament to how amazing our God is, how there is nothing that is impossible because the God we know and love and worship and adore is the God who in Jesus took the instrument of shameful death, embraced it, made friends with it, and transformed it into an instrument for life.
There has perhaps never been a better Easter sermon preached than the one Saint John Chrrysostom – the Golden-Tongued one – preached around the year 400. He knew way back then what it meant for Jesus to do what no one else could ever do. "Hell", he said, "was in an uproar because it was done away with. It was in an uproar because it is mocked. It was in an uproar for it is destroyed, it is annihilated, it is now made captive. Hell took a body and discovered God. It took earth and encountered heaven. It took what it saw and was overcome by what it did not see. Christ is risen, and life is liberated!" Good luck to any preacher ever topping that!
Saint John Crysostom
And life being liberated means that everything has been liberated, everything has been redeemed. Everything. No Gnostics around here, nu huh! The entire created order – humanity, animals, plants, dirt, sky, sea, all of it – is redeemed in the Resurrection of Jesus; after all, he is the one through whom ALL things are made, and thus ALL things are redeemed and find their perfection. In the Resurrection we are given a renewed calling to live in harmony, not just with one another but all of creation. In the Resurrection is the hope of creation itself, that we can once more know who we are and whose we are and live in right relationship with one another, with our planet, and with God, just as we did in the Garden. In the Resurrection we need not seek power, prestige, and possession to fill that God-shaped void in our being because God has not only come to us but we have been raised to God – we who are the very Body of Christ are raised with Christ’s own earthly Body to the fullness of resurrection glory.
We must remember, though, that Jesus took his scars with him when he got up. Resurrection, after all, does not erase trauma, but it does transform and transfigure trauma. Even the Christus Rex, our parish's symbol of Jesus’ triumph over death that hangs on the wall behind the altar, bears the wounds in his hands and feet. Easter Sunday does mark the beginning of something different because of the Resurrection, yet that doesn’t mean we no longer bear whatever scars we have born through whatever fiery hells we have encountered. For Christ to be raised with his wounds, though, means that even our pain, our failings, our scars are redeemed, given new meaning and hope. We can wear them proudly now, no longer afraid of them, but grateful even for where they brought us. Every broken road has led us to this happy morning. Because Jesus has literally loved the hell out of every single one of us!
He IS risen. Indeed. So if he IS risen, and we with him, then where do we go from here? He told Mary – who blessedly had eyes to see and recognize him in spite of her own scars – that he was going to Galilee, to the region just north of Jerusalem where he did most of his earthly ministry. There, he said, you will see me. So where is Galilee? It’s everywhere that you find the children of God longing for and meeting the resurrected Jesus:
It is the hospital room where the person lies in pain, longing for a shot of love from anyone who would visit.
It is the prison where the one who sits in sorrow and remorse over his crime wishes to just know that God has not utterly forsaken him.
It is the drag show where those told they were accursed and sinful find belonging and meaning through art and expressions of God’s fabulous love.
It is the steps of the government building where the parents who buried their child have the courage to call for legislation that might prevent another family from suffering the same fate.
It is anywhere that the cry for justice, for peace, for love, for mercy, for healing, can be heard. Those are the places, where Jesus was found in his earthly ministry, and those are the places, resurrected people of God, to which we are called this day. Those are the places where we will not only see Jesus even still, but may be Jesus to others. You’ve heard it said that you might be the only Bible anyone ever reads? Well, you might be the only Jesus anyone ever meets. So go love the hell out of ‘em, just like Jesus!
Resurrection is real, y’all. I’m living proof of that! So are you! What will you do with this wild, precious, resurrected life of yours?