Easter Sunday
Well on this beautiful
Easter morning you are probably coming here hoping that you’d get to hear me
preach for half an hour? Right? Yeah.
Tell you what, I’ll make a deal with you. When you pick up the bulletin after Mass
today and hopefully we have enough, that we made enough. On the front of the bulletin you’ll see a
beautiful reflection on Easter which I wrote.
Actually I wrote this in 1985 when I was pastor down in
There is one little line I
would like to reflect on for a moment, from the gospel and we kind of miss
it. It’s the reading that talks about
the two disciples running to the tomb and it says Peter stood outside, he
looked inside, he saw the burial cloths.
The other disciple came, probably John.
He looked inside. He went
in. He saw the burial cloths at one end
and then the cloth that had covered the face of Jesus rolled up nice and neat
at the other end. And then the scripture
says, “He saw and believed because they did not yet understand the scriptures
that Jesus had to rise from the dead.”
What’s behind that? In the Hebrew culture of that time, between
the servant and the master. The servant
would set like the supper table. He
would put everything out nice and neat.
The master would come, sit down, have his meal. The servant would be off to the side watching
and waiting for when the master would be finished with the meal. When the master had finished eating his meal
he would take his napkin, wipe his fingers, wipe off his beard because they all
wore beards. Then if he took the napkin
and crumpled it up and threw it by the plate the message to the servant was,
“I’m finished, you can take it all away.”
But if the master, upon
finishing most of his meal, took his napkin, folded it up very neatly, laid it
next to the plate the servant knew that by that little gesture of taking the
napkin and folding it up he was saying to his servant, “I’m not finished, I’m
coming back.”
That’s what you have in the
gospel. In all the gospels’ accounts of
Easter Sunday there is no resurrection appearance of Jesus. All the scriptures have on Easter Sunday
morning is they see the empty tomb and they believe. Resurrection calls for belief, not
understanding.
That’s why you’re here this
morning. To see the resurrection
happening. Resurrection isn’t just
something that happened 2000 years ago, it’s in progress right here and now and
yours and my life. How? When you go forth from this celebration today
and you smile at someone and you wish them a very Happy Easter. If you call somebody up. If you go to visit someone. If you clothe the hungry. If you feed the starving. If you make a contribution to the sick. If you forgive somebody. If you have mercy. If you have compassion. If you have some understanding. If you put a little more peace into your
life. If you forgive somebody. That’s the resurrection happening right now
in your life and in my life. That’s what
we see and we believe. No one can make
you understand that but you and I believe it and we will go forth then from
this Easter celebration of the Eucharist this morning to give joy and hope and
love to somebody else.
If you go home and have your
Easter egg hunts what are you going to do with those eggs if you get them? You aren’t going to throw them at each other
are you? No! Probably they’re decorated real nicely aren’t
they? You decorate them, then you find
them. And perhaps mom and dad are kind
of clever, or grandma and grandpa and hide them in really some hard places for
you to find. But once you get them, and
then you probably all bring them together, come into the supper table or dinner
table and then you peel them and then you eat them, and you share them with one
another. That’s the resurrection. New life.
New energy that you’re giving to one another. We see it and because we see it we believe
it. That’s what we are about.
Not too bad huh?
Well we are here today
because we have the gift of faith.
Through our paschal mystery we’ve been buried with Christ in baptism,
then we may rise with Him to a new life.
And now that we’ve completed our Lenten observance we want to renew our
baptismal promises that we all made when we were baptized, that perhaps our
parents and godparents made for us, when we all rejected Satan and his works
and we promised to serve God faithfully in His holy, Catholic church.
So I have six statements and
to each one your response is “I do.”
Do you reject sin so as to
live in the freedom of God’s children? I
do.
Do you reject the glamour of
evil and refuse to be mastered by sin? I
do.
Do you reject Satan, the
father of sin and the prince of darkness?
I do.
Do you believe in God the
Father almighty, the creator of heaven and earth? I do.
Do you believe in Jesus
Christ, His only Son, Our Lord who was born of the virgin Mary, was crucified,
died and was buried, rose from the dead and is now seated at the right hand of
the Father? I do.
Do you all believe in the
Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness
of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting? I do.
God the all powerful Father
of Our Lord Jesus Christ has given us all a new birth by water and the Holy
Spirit and forgiven all of our sins. May
He also keep us faithful to our Lord Jesus Christ forever and ever. Amen.