Let us pray:
Eternal Spirit, unseen source of peace and power, thanks be to you for the note of victory that fills the world this morning.  Thanks be to you for our living Lord over whom death did not have the final word.  For the rich heritage of faith that life is more powerful than death, we thank you..  For every sign we have been given that love can never lose its own, we thank you.  Strengthen our believing, renew and deepen our faith in you and in life eternal this Easter morning.  Now gracious God, open your Word to our hearts and our hearts to your Word.
In the spirit of Jesus.  Amen.

He is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!  This is the glad, good news of Easter.  Easter is the day God has made by bringing Jesus Christ from the dead. All that is asked of us is that we rejoice and be glad in it.

On Good Friday, humankind did its worst.  On Easter, God did God’s best.  Easter is God’s sign that love and life will finally have the last word; hatred and death will be defeated. As the psalmist writes, “This is the day God has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.”

There was a group of seminary students who played basketball in the seminary gym. An elderly janitor would sit and read until they finished and he could lock up.  One afternoon as they were leaving, a student asked: “What are you reading?”  The janitor replied, “I’m reading the Book of Revelation.”  The student laughed and said, “Well, do you understand it?”  “I reckon I do.”  The student thought that was really funny.  He had studied the book in the original Greek and still didn’t fully understand it.  “Oh, well, tell me what it means.”  The old man said softly, “It means that Jesus Christ is going to win.”

Now, having said that, it occurs to me it might be too simple a story for such a sophisticated Easter congregation.  Perhaps it would be better instead to refer to the beloved words of Julia Ward Howe:
 God has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat,
 And is sifting out the hearts of all before the Judgment Seat.
 O be swift my soul to answer and be jubilant my feet,
 Our God is marching on.

No!  That sounds too triumphant for this tentative age of faith.  Yet, if after worship we went into coffee hour, and after we all had coffee, gathered around in a large circle and put a trash can into the middle of the circle and each of us placed in the trash can all the things we no longer believe, all of our doubts and questions, we would fill several trash cans.  Then you would be left with whatever it is you do believe.  Because you cannot live on your doubts.  As Harry Emerson Fosdick once said, “There comes a time in your life when you need to start doubting your doubts.”

The words of the poet express it well this Easter morn:
 Truth forever on the scaffold
 Wrong forever on the throne
 Yet that scaffold sways the future
 And behind the dim unknown
 Stands God within the shadows
 Keeping watch above God’s own.

You see, my friends, however you choose to say it, the glad, good news of Easter is that the final word is with God and the last word for us and for our world will be a word of love.

Rejoice and be glad this Easter morning, for there is nothing in life or death which can ever separate you from the love of God made known in the Risen Christ.  This is the day God has made, and we will rejoice and be glad in it.

This Easter morning we affirm not an old truth; we celebrate a new truth for the strengthening and sustaining of our lives.  If all Easter says to you is that there is the promise of life sometime, somewhere in the future, then that is a pretty thin blanket to pull up on a cold and dark night of grief.  The glorious good news of Easter is about God in Christ giving life to you and to the world this Easter morning.

“I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus says.  Sad to say, there are many Christians and a large number of churches who really do not know what this means.  They take it to mean, “A bright and beautiful day is coming in the great beyond.  In the bye and bye your loved one will live again.”  Listen carefully to the words of Jesus: “I am the Resurrection and the Life.”  This is one of the most radical passages in the gospels.

Don’t allow the Easter flowers and the bunny baskets to deceive you.  By the way, do you know you could buy an Easter basket [Fr in ‘99] at K-Mart for $15.99 filled with a combat vehicle military play set, or if you were on a tighter budget, Wal-mart had a smaller basket for $4.88 featuring an action figure equipped with automatic rifle and bazooka – for ages three and older.  Just what children need to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus in our war-weary world.
Well, this is not about Easter baskets as a rite of Springtime.  This is the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is radical stuff!  Jesus is moving the resurrection from the future to the present. Today is the day of resurrection.  “I am the Resurrection and the Life!”  Not “will be” or “might be” or perhaps “someday.”  I AM the Resurrection and the Life, Jesus says.  Peace, love, joy, freedom from fear.  All that doesn’t begin when you die.  It begins today.  Your life can be different, changed, transformed.  Right now. This Easter morning.

Why is it that so many Christians and so many churches who believe in Jesus still push all the great promises of the gospels way out into the future?  Maybe, for some strange reason, it feels safer that way.  Do I believe in the Resurrection at the Last Day?  Yes, I believe.  Do you believe?  Do I believe in the great cloud of witnesses in the listening skies?  Yes, I believe.  Do you believe.

But if that is all you and I believe, then this world will be a sad and lonesome valley. Whoever believes in Jesus Christ as the revelation of God’s love, forgiveness and grace, has already passed from death to life – has already claimed God’s gift of new life.  Why do we find this so difficult to accept, trust and believe?  New life can begin today – this morning – with Jesus Christ and not at grave side.

Saint Paul ends the magnificent 15th chapter of his first letter to the church in Corinth, where he says that the Resurrection is central to the Christian faith, with words which are among my favorite passages of scripture:  “Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”

“Therefore” is the key word. Therefore, because Christ has been raised from the dead you are assured that your life, your best efforts, your faith, your love, your deeds of generosity and kindness, your labor are not in vain.

In our kind of world, torn by war, anxiety and fear, we need this affirmation, this reminder that the way we choose to live and love does matter.  It makes a difference – to your family, to your friends, to your church, and to your God.

In his wonderful book Open Secrets, Richard Lischer, Professor at Duke Divinity School, tells about his experiences as a newly ordained Lutheran pastor in his first church in southern Illinois, including Buster Tolland’s funeral.  Buster was a mechanic at the local garage.  His wife Beulah drank too much. They argued loudly and bitterly and in the middle of an ugly shouting match – when Buster came home for lunch – and there was no lunch – Buster dropped dead.  “Dead before he hit the floor,” Beulah said at least a hundred times to anyone who would listen.  Beulah insisted on the most expensive casket, “because she owed it to Buster.”  The young minister alienated the funeral director when he tried to counsel Beulah about cost containment.  Finally, the day of the funeral arrived.  The service was a disaster.  Beulah wailed loudly throughout the service.  Then the congregation moved to the little cemetery on the hill behind the church.  The casket was lowered into the grave, the words of committal were spoken.  Four uniformed veterans from the local VFW formed an honor guard, fired their rifles and folded the flag.  Instead of a bugler there was twelve-year-old Moriah Seamans, standing half-way up the hill.  Her new cornet caught the sunlight and she was about to give the performance of her life.  In the silence of the spring afternoon her mother stood beside her to hold her music and to steady her child.  Moriah did not play “Taps.”  She played four stanzas of “I Know My Redeemer Liveth,” each note floating down the hill to where the mourners stood at graveside.  Lischer says, “It was as if her music were a time-delayed message coming to us from a saner and more beautiful world.”  Standing in the mud of the cemetery on that April afternoon, he says, “he could see Easter.”

The ordinary becomes holy, everyday experiences become sacred.  At the most unlikely of moments and in the most unexpected places the Risen Christ appears.  It is my prayer that in the faces around you this day, in whatever you are wrestling with in your own life, wherever you will be at this time tomorrow, you will see Easter.  Just when our war-torn world and our tension-filled lives could use a miracle – along comes Easter!

Thanks be to God!  This is the day God has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.  Christ is Risen!  Christ is Risen indeed!

Let us pray:
God of power and majesty, with the rising of the sun you raised Jesus Christ and delivered him from death’s destruction.  We praise you this bright day for all your gifts of new life.  Let the light of the Resurrection faith shine on each of us as we leave here today, making plain some answers to our questions, some assurance for our doubts, some strength for our weakness.  Send us forth strong in the faith that because Christ lives we, too, can live, not tomorrow but today.  In the spirit of our Risen and Reigning Lord.  Amen.