This is the Day! Easter Sunday 4-24-11

This Is the Day! Easter Homily 4-24-11
We are an Easter people! This is the day we’ve been waiting for—the alleluias are back, the choir is eagerly awaiting their turn to bring you the Easter message and the world, it seems, is primed for a fresh understanding of the resurrection of our Lord. And we are poised to be a people of the resurrection once again. Rising again, making it through the dark night, acknowledging daybreak with new eyes and, perhaps, a new heart and mind; this is the day that our alleluias swell beyond the smallness of our lives and join with the awesome alleluias of the church universal—throughout the world, throughout all time.
What is it about Easter that makes it all seem so new? When we were children, many of us looked forward not just to the candy, but to the new clothes. For those of us who grew up poor, it was the one Sunday a year that we were almost guaranteed something new to wear for church. New hats, new shoes, new ruffles or bow ties—all came to represent the change that happened each year sometime in March or April that capped off a strange and holy week of palms, and pain, and even death. Even as children we knew that something had happened—long before we grasped the concept of resurrection, we got the idea of ‘new’. And so we talk of Easter being a time when things are new and fresh, a time of new beginnings and new ways. A giant do-over, if you will.
But we must not miss the miracle. And the miracle is this: it is the same Jesus who taught us to love, who speaks to us in the garden this morning. The same Jesus who healed and taught us, who chastised and challenged us and called us to walk in the way of justice and peace—this same Jesus leads us out of the garden into the world to sing our ‘alleluias’ beyond these walls. Perhaps that is the most miraculous of the miraculous after all—that even after suffering and dying, and rising from the dead, this Jesus speaks to us of peace and forgiveness and calls us to understand once and for all, that nothing, nothing, nothing will ever be the same again. This same Jesus who walked this earth, putting life to the love of our creator, God, in ways that no one had ever seen; this is the same Jesus who lived, and died, and lived again so that we would know just how far one of God’s children would go to save the rest of us. And so our lives are made new in this living and dying and living again, we remember.
And as our alleluias pulse through us, grateful to be in this place on this day, celebrating the resurrection of this Lord, we rejoice in the resurrection of this Jesus who said “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another; as I have loved you,…” Today, as we recall the earthly life of Jesus and marvel that the stone has rolled away, let us open our hearts to loving one another, not just the one anothers gathered here, but all those one anothers whose names we do not know, lives we do not understand, and languages we do not speak. This is the call to resurrection, to Easter itself. This is the new way of being that this same Jesus who lived, loved, died, and rose again calls us to embrace with our resurrected hearts and minds. Let the Alleluias begin!