March 23,  2008 The Sunday of the Resurrection also called Easter Day Year A Acts 10:34-43 or Jeremiah 31:1-6 Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24 Colossians 3:1-4 or Acts 10:34-43 John 20:1-18 or Matthew 28:1-10 Click here for sermons from previous weeks The Rev. Virginia W. Nagel Ephphatha Parish of the Deaf Episcopal Diocese of Central NY Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia! Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; His mercy endures forever. One of the great proofs of God's mercy is that we are allowed to live in his son, Jesus Christ, and, as Jesus promised at the Last Supper, Jesus and God himself live in us. This is a great privilege. The God who made and redeemed the universe comes and lives in you and me. We have been raised with Christ, and the Bible says it has already happened. This is because to God all time is "now" time. There is no past and no future, everything is NOW. In God's understanding of time, the stable in Bethlehem and the cross on Good Friday and the empty tomb on Easter are all of them NOW. And so Paul can write to the church in Colossae, If you have been raised with Christ.... It doesn't happen after we get to heaven. It happens when Jesus himself rose out of that tomb and stepped into the garden. And it is still happening today. That is why Paul goes on to finish his sentence with a command: If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on things of earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Yes, we are redeemed. We are saved. We are joined to Christ, and so we cannot act in any way that Jesus himself would not act. Like Jesus, the main thing in our life and thinking must be God, and only God ... God alone. Not the mortgage, not our vacation, not the nasty thing somebody said to us...just God. And God is "wide enough and deep enough and broad enough" as the hymn says, to fill our whole mind and heart and life, if we will let him. Jesus not only allowed God to fill him up, he embraced God with his whole heart and in every word and action he ever did. And, Paul says, if we have truly been raised with Christ, through our faith in him, we will be like that, too. Not completely, not at first, but gradually we will be filled with God's Holy Spirit and put on Christ . Now this doesn't make any sense to many people, because we can only understand one kind of time at once. We do not have God's ability to see all times as happening at the same time. We do not have God's ability to understand how we can be ourselves and be filled up with Christ, and with God. We don't understand how God can live in us and we can live in him. We just have to take his word for it. It is so, and that's that. The Lord is my strength and my song, And he has become my salvation. This happens because he has come to live in us and accepted us as members living in him. And therefore, I shall not die, but I shall live, and declare the works of the Lord. This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Yes, it's a marvel that we cannot understand. All we can do is say, Yes, I believe. Help my unbelief. Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia! Back To Top Home