He is risen!

[He is risen indeed!]

[Hold up a large stone.]

Is this stone alive?

I think most of you would say, “no.”

[Hold up a plastic lobster or insect or another object.]

Is this lobster alive?

[Trust me. It’s not alive, or I wouldn’t be holding it! It’s plastic. It’s not alive. It looks like it could be alive. It looks exactly like a lobster. But it’s an inanimate object.]

If you remember back to science class, we strike a difference in our world between what is animate and inanimate.

Plants, reptiles, mammals, amoebas, cells, even bones are animate objects. They are alive.

Hair, fingernails, rocks, the rug, this pew. These are inanimate objects. They are not alive. They do not grow on their own. Hair and fingernails are pushed out and appear to grow. But they themselves are dead cells and could not grow on their own unless attached to a living being.

This leftover palm frond, now separated from its tree –dead.

This clothing, the fibers long separated from their plant sources –dead.

This pew, for many years cut and hewn from its source, a tree –dead.

The people we read about in our history books, their past lives and bodies –dead.

This building, made of brick and mortar, wood and tile –dead.

The saints who have come before us, those bodies we bury in our cemeteries and memorials –dead.

But Jesus ….is not dead.

I need you to hear me now.

Jesus is not dead. Jesus  is  alive.

This proclamation goes against everything we know, everything we believe in, everything that defines our physical world and what we understand to be scientifically true.

And yet, Jesus is alive.

We mourned his passing during Holy Week. We acknowledged his burial. We felt the sadness of his absence for those three days, the loss of a life lived and a mission begun.

And yet, today, we declare, that Jesus is in fact alive!

How many here believe that Jesus is alive?

You see, Jesus doesn’t just rise up for a moment on that Easter Sunday in the first century. He didn’t just make a brief appearance to prove he had conquered death. He wasn’t, as Scrooge suggests, an undigested bit of beef. He wasn’t a ghost. He wasn’t an appearance, or a vision, or an illusion. He wasn’t a fictional tale.

He was there.

More than that, he is here.

In this room. Within this congregation. In this world. At this time. Real and alive!

Jesus’ rising was not merely transitional or transitory, but permanent and enduring. Until the end of the age, Jesus is here.

He’s alive! He’s influential. He’s got healing power. Changing power. Building power. Saving power. Right here and now.

That is the good news of Jesus’ resurrection. This was not a one time thing. This is an always thing.

So why do we spend so much time looking for our security and our answers and our resurrections among our buildings, and numbers, and traditions, and history? Why do we look for the living power of Jesus in our past when he’s right here in our present? Why do we mistrust our future when we already know that Jesus is already there? Why do we worship a historical figure, a storybook figure, a dead-and-gone figure of Jesus, when we know in our hearts that Jesus is not dead nor gone, but here and alive? And in that case, why are we not celebrating?

We spend most of our time mourning for what is past and gone, instead of looking around to what Jesus is inviting us to be doing with him now!

In our scripture for today, the angels of the Lord ask just that of the women at the tomb. They had gone to the tomb with fragranced oils and spices, but when they got there, they saw the stone to the entrance rolled away. Remember what we said about stones as witnesses! This one is a big one! They stood there kind of dumbfounded. Then they saw two men standing beside them in gleaming white clothing. They said to the women there, their eyes searching within the tomb for Jesus: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” “He isn’t here. He has been raised.”

Don’t you remember what he told you?

At that, the women ran to tell the others. Even then, it was so hard for them to believe!

For the disciples, the mission, everything they believed in and had fought for, had spent three years excited about, had died along with their teacher and rabbi, Jesus.

Talk about decline! His following, once thousands and thousands, had dwindled to a mere few, close disciples of his inner circle. Most had given up, sure that this was just another failed uprising. Many had returned to their homes or were hiding from the Romans.

Only the women ventured out to the tomb, as no one would question them being there.

They witnessed to Jesus resurrection. The others would too.

And still it was hard to fathom. Hard to take in. Hard for them to understand how they were to proceed. They would remain in their room, sitting shiva, until the time of the Pentecost.

When we are experiencing loss and grief, disappointment and decline, it’s hard for us to see anything but death around us. And yet, the good news of the resurrection, the good news still for us today, is that He Is Alive!

Our past, our religion, our traditions, our structures, our buildings, our hierarchies, our rules and regulations. None of these matter on resurrection day. They may surround us like tombs and remind us of “the way things used to be.” But today, Jesus reminds us that this is not the end of our story!

It is instead only the beginning!

God has accomplished something so spectacular that none of us can imagine it or believe it’s true! God has created life from dry bones, buds from barren trees, sprouts from dead seeds, resurrection life from a tortured and weary body! Because this is who God is. God is a Life Giver.

God created life. And God can re-create life.

God created the order of the universe, and God can adapt the order of that universe any which way God pleases!

Today we celebrate not just Jesus’ resurrection but our own. This is a time of new beginnings! Of new chances! Of renewed hope! And of the knowledge that God’s church does not end. It just changes form.

Rejoice people of God!

“Don’t look for the living among the dead!”

He is risen! And so are you!

He is risen!

[He is risen indeed!]