The phrase "while it was still dark," is greatly suggestive. The darkness was not only a description of the earliness of the morning, but it was a description of all people without firm belief in the Resurrection of Christ. Without that knowledge, as St. Paul has said, "we are a bunch of miserable human beings," because we have no understanding of the eternal and sacred character of human life, and for anyone trying to live it, it is a process of stumbling along in the darkness.

At the earlier Family Service when I asked the children what had happened to Jesus Christ that we celebrated today, one little boy popped up loudly enough for the entire congregation to hear: "HE RIZ!" I am surely sure that that was more acceptable to God than the response of the disciples when the women told them that they had found the tomb empty. They called it, properly translated: "Gibberish!"

Don’t tell me that it’s all my imagination that you are a different looking congregation of people than I have seen during the last few weeks. It shows in your faces. It rings in your voices. It exudes from your whole personality and countenance.

And don’t let the cynic chime in and say that it’s just the attraction of the crowds today. I have preached on Easters in some very peculiar places and to very small congregations, but the Day of Resurrection is always the same. And don’t tell me it’s the spring weather and that everyone feels better and is anxious to be out on a lovely Sunday morning and so you have to come to church. The first Easter that I spent in this city, we had a blizzard on Easter morning, but that didn’t change the congregation nor the joy of the service.

And don’t tell me that it’s commercialization, just like any of the other of our holidays. Oh, yes, the merchant may put up his sign: "Christ has risen, but our prices have remained the same." You know, it’s a strange thing that nobody, no matter how hard they have tried, has ever been able to commercialize Easter. It just doesn’t lend itself to commercialization - never has, never will.

One of Ernest Poole’s characters in one of his poetic novels says: "History is just news from the graveyard." Well, I’ll agree with him at one point. I’ll agree that all of history is shaped by the news from one graveyard, one garden outside of Jerusalem in about the year A.D. 30.

Our problem is, you see, that it’s not that life doesn’t have any real meaning. It’s the way we are living that makes it seem stupid and irrelevant and useless and meaningless. We forget that Eternal Life is not some "pie in the sky when we die" that we’re talking about, but Eternal Life is the life that you and I are living today, right here where we are now!

The best news of all the world and all the years is from that garden graveyard outside Jerusalem, with a tomb that was empty, and one who had lain there standing before all humanity for all time with the assurance: "I am the Resurrection and the Life. Whosoever believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die." Easter is the Good News about the universe and about Almighty God and about myself. It proclaims that the world is not some kind of an orphan asylum. It is not a mammoth machine shop. It is not a whirling ball hurtling through endless space. It is a home, and its heart is not something that the scientists are always looking for - the source of life. The heart of it is someone. It is the breathtaking news that the love of God given to us in a Risen and Living Lord is the Ultimate power in this universe!

What is human life? Oh, we’ve all heard the cynics. Mark Twain said: "Life would be worth living, if you could be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen." Fred Allen said that "there is no value to anything in life, except what can be put into a coffin." Or Don Herold, who said: "Life is just a few short years, from diapers to supposed dignity to decomposition." Yes, man has said, in many clever ways - or supposedly clever - that his life was stupid and meaningless. There is only one flaw in all of this. If life is as foolish and useless as they say, then their own estimate of life is just as stupid and irrelevant and senseless, and, therefore, I have no need to take account of it, because they are fools!

A Marine and I lay in the bottom of a foxhole during an artillery barrage. He struck a match, lit his cigarette, and then held the burning match up in front of my face, and with a quick puff of his breath, blew it out. He said: "That’s life, isn’t it, Padre?" And I replied: "You’re wrong. Remember those little trick birthday candles that we used to have, where you supposedly blow out the candle on the cake and it would be dead and smoldering? Then you would turn away for a moment, and then you would look back, and you would discover that the candle was not out at all, that it was still burning brightly. That’s life, Mac, and don’t ever forget it."

Or there is the story of the two garment workers in the garment section of New York that Myron Cohen likes to tell. One was a cutter and the other was a stitcher. They were working side by side, and they got to talking about vacations, and the one was saying how he was looking forward to his vacation, and the other said: "I’m not going to take a wacation dis year." He said: "Why you’re not going to take a wacation dis year?" The other said: "I took a wacation last year." "You did? Where did you go? I don’t remember." "I went on a safari in Efrica. I went elephant hunting." "Iss that right? Did you get an elephant?" "No, I found an elephant. He charged me, but

my gun jammed, and I vas killed." "Oiving, what you talking about, you vas killed? You ain’t dead. You’re sitting here living." And Irving replied: "You call dis living?" And so, that’s what many of us must ask: "Do you call this living?"

Eternal Life is credible to us because we believe in God as a Father. We believe that God created personality and can, and will, preserve that personality, each of us, individually, because each of us, individually, is precious to him; that we are the supreme creation of the universe. We believe that the life he gives us has meaning and purpose and value, because you and I, each one of us, is actually a child of God, and what, conceivably, could take our place with God?

The other evening, in a discussion of capital punishment that I heard on television - and I wonder why we call it "capital punishment" - that’s a lying euphemism. Punishment is something that we inflict in order to improve the discipline, the life, and the behavior of the person after the punishment, so how can we call it capital punishment? Why not call it "State Legalized Murder," which is what it actually is? But we are too delicate to use the proper words. We don’t like to face it.

In that discussion, I heard the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago make this statement: "Throughout all of history, the quality of any nation or culture can be measured by the value that it places on a human life. For the state to kill A, because he has killed B, in the wistful and unproven hope that C, observing this, will not kill D, is absolutely immoral, illegal, illogical, and ungodly." Who ever gave the state the right to do that, to use the life of a sacred human being who belongs to God for any purpose by destroying it? The discussion came up because of the decision that had been handed down by a Texas court that executions, public executions, could be televised. Well, that would be great! That would put us right back in the Coliseum in rotten, decaying, decrepit Rome. That would be the measure of our culture - degenerate and immoral - as the people who gathered in that Coliseum centuries ago for the fun of watching people be murdered!

Also in that discussion, a prosecuter from Georgia was asked about his state and others whose laws even allow teenagers to be executed, and the youngest executed, according to the records in the history of Georgia, was fourteen years of age, and the fact that two out of three teenagers who have been murdered by the state in this country were blacks. How do we explain that? Well, the mental giant of the law of the State of Georgia to whom that question was addressed was asked whether he didn’t think that executing a child of fourteen was cutting off what might be a useful and good and productive life. That genius of jurisprudence leaned back in his easy chair and sneered: "Any young man who has committed a dastardly crime has no useful or productive life ahead of him." That’s intelligent, isn’t it? I wonder if that Georgia prosecutor lived such a pure, sinless, and spotless life when he was a young man that he was able to say that kind of thing.

And so it is that we who have been taught by Christ of the sacredness of any human life, no matter how apparently vile or sinful, must continue to struggle against those who would destroy it, even if they are of our states or law enforcement agencies. When did God give us the right to murder any of his children?

We are so concerned in our day about endangered species - everything from the Whooping Crane to the Bald Eagle - and we sit here and stupidly don’t realize that the most endangered species on the face of the earth is homo sapiens - you and me? And our nation, and a few other hairbrained nations with us, are the ones who have made us the most endangered species on this earth, in absolute disobedience to the sacredness of human life. We are absolutely against abortion when it is used as a method of population control.

Wherever Christianity has gone, slavery has disappeared, the sweat shops of factories have disappeared, child labor has been made illegal. Wherever Christianity has gone, hospitals were erected, and the word "hospital" comes from the word "hospice," which was a place where the pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land were given care and food and shelter. We have established orphanages and child placement agencies throughout the world.

And now we are, again, going to show our estimate of the sacredness of human life, because we are going to do something that has not been done before here in Central Iowa on the scale that we plan to do it. Twenty-five Lutheran congregations of three great Lutheran bodies banded together to establish Lutheran Park, which will include every level of care when it is completed for the elderly of our state and community. We are starting off with a campaign immediately following Easter for over a half million dollars to match government funds to provide residences, hospital care, nursing home care, intermediate care for the elderly of every creed, every ethnic group, not just for Lutherans.

Our responsibility as a church family is to contribute, over three years, a third of that amount of half million dollars. We’ll do it gladly, and we’ll do more than that, I am sure, because this is something we believe in. We have 700 people in our own church family over the age of 65 and facing these years of uncertainty and need for care. Yes, it’s perhaps a trite saying that medical science has added years to life without adding life to those years, and now we intend to do what we possibly can, beginning where the old Danes began, back in 1924, and carrying on a great program from year to year that will expand, from time to time, to show our concern for the sacredness of human life that has reached those golden years.

In John Masefield’s play, The Trial of Christ, Procula, Pilate’s wife, is deeply disturbed by the crucifixion of Jesus. Finally, a Roman centurion, Longinus, comes to her with a message that he has found Christ’s tomb empty. Procula asked him: "Do you believe that he is dead?" "No, my lady." "Then where is he?" "Loose upon the world, my lady, where neither Jew nor Roman nor Greek nor anyone else can stop his Truth and his Life." That’s where the Risen Christ is now - loose in the world!

Yes, in many places, his presence causes conflict, but everyplace, his presence means hope. I know, through the Risen Christ, that my world and my life in it are real and worthwhile. I know, through Christ, that my life is of value to God. I am God’s son, as you are God’s child. Because Christ lives, I shall live. I know that my beloved dead are not lost. In my Father’s eternal care, how could they possibly be lost?

OH, HAPPY DAY! CHRIST IS RISEN! ALLELUIA!