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Eastertide Sermons, 1999
The Rt. Rev. John T. Cahoon, Jr. |
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Eastertide Sermons, 1999
The Rt. Rev. John T. Cahoon, Jr. |
Rogation Sunday also Easter V May 9, 1999
Easter IV May 2, 1999
Saint Mark's Day, Easter III April 25, 1999
Good Shepherd Sunday (Easter II) April 18, 1999
Low Sunday (Easter I) April 11, 1999
Easter Day, April 4, 1999
Rogation Sunday, also Easter V, May 9, 1999
In the world of CVS and Wal-Mart, the Easter season began in full force just after St. Patrick's Day, and it ended about a month ago. In the church, Easter begins on Easter Day and lasts for the forty days thereafter. We are still in Eastertide this morning, and we shall be there until Thursday. Easter is not over until we blow out the Paschal Candle on Ascension Day. The Paschal Candle has been burning since Easter morning to symbolize Christ's presence with his disciples during the forty days after his resurrection.
In the Prayer Book's calendar, Easter concludes with a mini-season called "Rogationtide." Rogationtide starts today, Rogation Sunday, and continues for the next three days leading up to the Ascension. The word "rogation" comes from the Latin word which means "to ask" as in "inter-rogation". In this moming's gospel Jesus tells us, "Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full."
In Rogationtide we reaffirm one of the deepest religious impulses of mankind -- the impulse to ask whatever forces may be out there to bless what we plant in the spring and make it grow so we will have a plentiful harvest in the fall and enough food to eat for the winter. The fact that the fertility festival called Rogation Sunday and the fertility festival called Mothers' Day fall on the same day this year is a happy coincidence.
At least in the Northern Hemisphere, the connection between Easter and spring fertility celebrations is not hard to see. Jesus rose from the dead in the spring to guarantee new life; flowers come back in the spring; rabbits are fertile; eggs represent birth. There is nothing wrong with Christians' enjoying all of those more secular - perhaps even pagan -aspects of the Easter celebration.
Just be sure your understanding of the symbolism is working in the right direction. The resurrection of Jesus is not a symbol of the rebirth of nature in spring. The rebirth of nature in spring is a symbol of the resurrection of Jesus. The hymn "Welcome, Happy Morning" gets this point right as it sings: "Bloom in every meadow, leaves on every bough/ Speak his sorrow ended, hail his triumph now."
In his First Epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul writes, "Christ is risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept." Firstfruits is an Old Testament concept. God told Israel to give him part of the spring harvest to help guarantee a good harvest later on in the fall. What they gave him in the spring was called the firstfruits, logically enough.
What St. Paul is trying to tell us is that there is a clear connection between the cycles of harvest and the resurrection of the dead. Offering the firstfruits in the spring led to a good harvest in the fall. The resurrection of Jesus in the spring leads to the full harvest of the dead later on at the last day - in the fall, so to speak.
Jesus is the firstfruits of the dead - he came up out of the grave first. We are the later fruits of the dead. We shall come up out of our own graves when he comes back. The marvelous hymn we just sang makes this point clearly: "Christ is risen, Christ the firstfruits of the holy harvest field;/ Which will all its full abundance at his second coming yield./ Then the golden ears of harvest will their heads before him wave;/ Ripened by his glorious sunshine from the furrows of the grave."
Before we say good-bye to Easter, let's review some important points it teaches us. The resurrection of Jesus proves that God is stronger than death. Since the devil's biggest hold over us comes through making us fear death, the resurrection breaks his hold.
Jesus' resurrection is a preview of our own resurrections. We shall rise from our graves in new bodies as he did; we shall be restored to our family and friends as he was.
Since death entered the world through the sin of man, Jesus' victory over death, is also victory over sin and its consequences. While we await the end, we participate directly in the resurrection through having our sins forgiven in the church. Jesus structured his church around shepherd-bishops, who have his power to forgive as they are obliged to proclaim his resurrection.
As St. Paul sums it up, "Christ is risen from the dead and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."
The Collect. O LORD, from whom all good things do come; Grant to us thy humble servants, that by thy holy inspiration we may think those things that are good, and by thy merciful guiding may perform the same; through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
The Epistle. St. James i. 22.
The Gospel. St. John XVi. 23.
Easter IV, May 2, 1999
Today's gospel reading is, like last week's, taken from St. John's account of Jesus' farewell address to his disciples at the Last Supper. In this passage he is trying to convince the disciples that it is a good thing that he is going to go away from them. He will leave them first in his death and burial, and then leave again for a longer time when he ascends into heaven.
His selling point about his departure is this: "It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you." The Comforter to whom he refers is the Holy Ghost. "Comforter" is a problematic word -- it always makes me think immediately of a warm, downy blanket; but Jesus is using "comforter" in its original sense -- to mean "strengthener."
So he is really saying, "I need to send a you a permanent stemgthener -- a helper you can always rely on -- and for me to send him to you, I have to go back to heaven." His promise about a comforter will be fulfilled on Pentecost, or Whitsunday, three weeks from now.
Later on, Jesus says, "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth." I think the best way to begin to understand what he is talking about is to remember that when he went back to heaven the church had none of the many things we take for granted.
They had no New Testament, no Prayer Book, no church calendar, no canon law, no hymnal, and no creeds. All of those things were left to the church to work out for themselves -- presuming that they would call continually on the guidance of the Holy Spirit for help.
The first major issue of belief or practice the church confronted was the question, "Does a Gentile have to become a Jew before he can become a Christian?" Opinion was divided between those who thought a Gentile could become a Christian, but would also have to keep the whole Old Testament Law, and those who thought that a Gentile could just get baptized and that would be all he needed to do.
The church resolved the dispute by bringing together all of the apostles -- all the bishops of the church -- in Jerusalem. As I hope you realize, they agreed that a Gentile did not have to keep the Old Testament Law. They believed they had discerned God's answer at the moment they achieved unanimity. So the letter they sent to the church began, "It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us..."
That council at Jerusalem, which took place around 50 A.D., is described for us in the Book of Acts. It became the model for the way the church would solve major disputes over belief and practice. They would call all of the bishops of the church together to deliberate the question in what became known as an ecumenical council. There were seven such councils while the church was still undivided -- in the period up to 1054. We accept their conclusions as authoritative and binding upon our church.
The first ecumenical council after the New Testament period took place at Nicaea near the Black Sea in 325. The continuing impact of that council upon us, over 1600 years later, is obvious from the fact that we just recited the creed that is more or less what the church came up with there.
The emperor Constantine the Great called the Council of Nicaea. He wanted the bishops to resolve what should sound to us like a simple problem in theology. The question was, "Is Jesus really God, the same way God the Father is God, or is Jesus something less?"
Avery popular preacher named Arius was saying that Jesus was a really great guy -- probably the greatest of all guys, but not really God. A large, though nervous, group in the church proclaimed that Jesus was the second person of the Holy Trinity and, therefore, completely equal to the Father.
The key words on this issue in the Nicene Creed are the words in the paragraph about Jesus which read, "being of one substance with the Father." Arius lost at Nicaea. We continue to proclaim Nicene orthodoxy, that Jesus is God just as the Father is God. They are made out of the same stuff, as it were. He is "God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God."
Tradition tells us that the most influential player at the Council of Nicaea was Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria in North Africa. Alexander's top assistant at Nicaea was a young deacon named Athanasius. Athanasius succeeded Alexander as bishop soon thereafter, and his entire career as a bishop reflects the controversy that still existed in the church after Nicaea.
People in those days took their theology very seriously. Emperors and other potentates influenced the church deeply by acting upon their own theological tastes. Athanasius was exiled and returned to his diocese seven times as fashions about the nature of Jesus changed. In the end, of course, Athanasius's view prevailed -- at least until lately.
His life illustrates one way the Holy Ghost leads the church into all truth, as Jesus promised. Somebody has to stand up for it -- somebody has to proclaim the truth no matter what the consequences for him might turn out to be.
Athanasius was extremely influential on the church through his writings as well as his witness. Alexandria was the intellectual center of the Mediterranean world in his day, and Athanasius learned and thrived in that setting. But he insisted that philosophy and philosophical theology -- so congenial and seductive to the Greek mind -- must always be subordinated to more earthy and Jewish revelation in the Holy Scriptures.
Constantine had made Christianity legal in the Roman empire about ten years before Nicaea. One result was that many new members flooded into the church. Christianity had gone overnight from being a criminal activity to being positively chic.
Some long-time believers who had endured persecution and social ostracism were not pleased about all that. Standards of Christian commitment had quite obviously been lowered. Many such people fled into the desert to become monks and hermits.
Athanasius spent some time in the desert early in his life. He wrote a book about his experiences called the Life of St. Antony. You may have run across St. Antony in art galleries -- he is the one sitting in a cave surrounded by psychedelic colors and demons and naked women. I assure you that the naked women are demons too.
The book became the first best-selling saint's biography in the church's history, and it had a tremendous impact upon the growth of the solitary, desert life. The book is still available. When I first read it thirty years ago it had a profound effect on me, and I commend it to you.
If all that were not enough, we also remember Athanasius for his impact on the New Testament itself. The church wrote the New Testament in its early days, but there was debate and dispute for over three hundred years as to which books should be in and which books should be out.
In a letter to his diocese in 367, Athanasius listed the books he thought were authoritative. His list is the one on which the church finally agreed, and which we continue to use.
I find it hard to think of a figure since the New Testament who has had a greater impact on the church's life than Athanasius. Jesus said the Holy Ghost would lead the church into all truth, and the career of Athanasius proves it. St. Athanasius died at Alexandria 1626 years ago today, May 2, 373. But the word "Athanasius" means "not dead."
The Collect. O ALMIGHTY God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men; Grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle. St. James i. 17.
The Gospel. St. John xvi. 5.
Saint Mark's Day, Easter III, April 25, 1999
There is nothing about the life of St. Mark which connects him particularly to April 25. Putting his feast day on April 25 appears to be another example of how the church in its early years took over pagan festivals that existed already and put a Christian spin on them -- setting Christmas on December 25 is the prime example.
In the ancient world, April 25 was the day on which farming people paraded around their fields and prayed to the pagan god who was in charge of protecting crops from mildew. Over time the church introduced the custom of singing Christian litanies in procession on this day, and later extended the commemoration to include St. Mark. So his day is the relic of a sort of springtime festival whose roots are not unconnected to those of Arbor Day and (dare I mention it) Earth Day.
In any event, the most significant fact about St. Mark himself is that he wrote the second New Testament Gospel. Unlike St. Matthew and St. John, he does not claim to have been an eyewitness to the events he writes about, but he is a character later on in the New Testament.
His mother's house is where the believers pray for St. Peter's release from jail in the Book of Acts; Mark goes with St. Paul and St. Barnabas on their missionary journey; and he is an associate of both St. Peter and St. Paul later on in Rome. He is believed to have been the founder of the church in North Africa, and the popes of the Coptic Church of Egypt call themselves "successors to St. Mark". The center of his cult in the west is at Venice, where his bones are thought to have been brought in the eighth or ninth century.
St. Mark's Gospel is the shortest one and in some ways the most direct. In his account of Jesus' arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, he writes, "A certain young man, dressed only in a linen cloth, was following Jesus. They tried to arrest him, but he ran away naked, leaving the cloth behind." That may well be St. Mark putting himself into the story -- as a Maundy Thursday streaker.
The Prayer Book's collect for today prays that we will allow ourselves to be instructed by St. Mark's teaching. The best way to do that is, quite obviously, to study his Gospel. If we are rooted in his teaching we will not be, to quote the collect, "Like children carried away with every blast of vain doctrine."
That imagery is taken from today's epistle, where St. Paul talks about how Jesus parcels out gifts in the church. After we are baptized, we all have gifts. We are supposed to use our gifts not to call attention to ourselves but to help build up the body of the church.
As we work to build up the body, we mature ourselves. St. Paul says we grow up into the image of Jesus -- the Holy Ghost makes us more into what Jesus is in his nature - what St. Paul calls "a perfect man ... the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."
As we grow into Christ, we become more stabilized in what we believe and in what we do. We are no longer so much like children who cannot make up their minds or focus upon any one thing for very long -- who are susceptible to any attractive new idea and any sort of deceptive trickery someone might use to try to get us off the right path.
Flightiness in beliefs and actions and susceptibility to anything new are the prevailing sins of our period of history -- especially in the church. The antidote for that sort of instability is to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest such things as St. Mark's Gospel.
Today's Gospel is taken from what St. John writes about Jesus' long speech at the Last Supper. In it he uses another image for the church -- one that is especially appropriate if we are thinking about growing plants. The Old Testament says repeatedly that the people of God are like a vineyard. God plants it, he tends it and takes care of it, and he tries to make it fruitful, but careless vinedressers tend to let the vineyard go to seed, and wild boars run through it and root up the vines.
Jesus says, "I am the true vine, my father is the pruning gardener, and you my followers are the branches." Since we are merely branches -- offshoots of the vine -- the only way we can bear fruit and stay alive is to remain rooted in the main trunk of the vine. That means we have to stick with Jesus as he reveals himself to us in such places as St. Mark's Gospel. If we get separated from him, we wither away and die just as a branch does if it gets cut off from its trunk.
To push the poetic image a bit farther, the sap of the vine which runs from the trunk into the branches is like the Holy Ghost who connects us to Jesus and gives us his life. We experience hardship and trouble in our lives, but that is not a mistake. Sending us hardships to test us is the way God disciplines us and helps us grow up - just as a gardener will cut branches back so they can, in the end, bear even more fruit.
So we give thanks to God today for the work and the writings of St. Mark the Evangelist. In this Easter season he stands out for us as a steadfast witness to the resurrection of Jesus. "Christ is risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept."
The Collect. Almighty God, who showest to them that are in error the light of thy truth, to the intent that they may return into the way of righteousness; Grant unto all those who are admitted into the fellowship of Christ's Religion, that they may avoid those things that are contrary to their profession, and follow all such things as are agreeable to the same; through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
The Epistle. i Peter ii. 2.
The Gospel. St. John xvi. 16.
The Second Sunday after Easter is nicknamed "Good Shepherd Sunday" for quite obvious reasons. In the epistle, St. Peter says that Jesus' death and resurrection have brought us all back to the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls. In the gospel, Jesus says, "I am the good shepherd."
When you read the Hebrew Bible you discover quite quickly that the economy of ancient Israel was based upon raising and herding sheep. So, inevitably, many of the major male characters in the Old Testament earned their livings as shepherds: Abel was a shepherd, Abraham was a shepherd, Isaac was a shepherd, Jacob and his sons were shepherds, later on Moses was a shepherd and King David was a shepherd.
Because shepherding was so much a part of the everyday life of the Hebrew people, it was natural for them to use imagery borrowed from shepherding as a poetic way of talking about human life. Especially in the Psalms, a fundamental idea is that human beings tend to act as sheep do, and God always acts as a shepherd does.
Sheep are cute and cuddly and their wool and their skins and their meat make them economically valuable. But sheep are also not very smart, and they tend to wander away and get lost and scattered. So they need someone to watch out for them and care for them and steer them in the right direction. That pretty well sums up the Old Testament's view of the human predicament.
The best-known use of this pastoral imagery comes in Psalm 23. David the author was herding sheep when Samuel called him to succeed Saul as King of Israel. David came to public attention when he killed the Philistine giant Goliath with his slingshot - the same weapon he used to protect his sheep from wolves.
David writes from the viewpoint of a sheep, saying, "The Lord is my shepherd." He goes on to talk about how God leads him and feeds him and keeps him in line and protects him from his enemies.
God did not shepherd the people of Israel all by himself. He shared his shepherding with the leaders he set up over Israel - judges like Joshua and Moses, and then later on the kings and the priests. The human shepherds were flawed, as all human beings are. The worst ones among them took shameless advantage of their sheep and brought ruin upon themselves and disgrace upon God.
So God promised that someday he would send Israel a proper shepherd —one who would take care of them and never let them down. That promise was in the same vein as his promises to send a good king to replace all the bad kings and a good priest to replace all the bad priests.
Jesus says that he is the one God promised in the Old Testament. "I am not like all the bad shepherds, I am the good shepherd." Jesus is, of course, the good king and the good priest too.
In today's lesson he contrasts himself with a hired man. When a wolf attacks a herd of sheep, a hired shepherd will run away, because the sheep don't belong to him. The good shepherd owns the sheep, so he knows them just as they know him. The good shepherd does not run away and leave his sheep to the wolves, he stays and risks his life to protect the sheep and keep them safe.
Jesus says, "I am the good shepherd... and I lay down my life for the sheep." That echoes his words, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." We are Jesus' friends, we are Jesus' sheep. He knows us all by name. He gave up his life to forgive us all together and one by one - by his stripes we are healed.
Last week we talked about how Jesus extends the experience of his once-for-all resurrection on into human history. He does it through structuring his church around the apostolic ministry of bishops who are witnesses to the resurrection and through the apostolic priestly power to forgive sins in his name.
Jesus shepherds his people through his church, too. We call the clergy "pastors"- shepherds. When a deacon is ordained priest (at least with our Prayer Book), the bishop admonishes him with these words, 'Feed and provide for the Lord's family... seek for Christ's sheep that are dispersed abroad ... how great a treasure is committed to your charge ... they are the sheep of Christ, which he bought with his death, and for whom he shed his blood."
When a priest is consecrated bishop, he is told, quite bluntly, "Be to the flock of Christ a shepherd, not a wolf: feed them, devour them not." I used to have a friend who was fond of saying, "When the devil wants to wreck the church he gets the clergy to do it for him." Our own church has had to come into existence because of a vulpine plague of bad shepherds.
But our good shepherd remains faithful. And if we trust in his love for us and try to do what he wants us to do, we will have the courage and the ability to raise up trustworthy shepherds so the sheep of God can be fed and cared for properly. Nothing is more important.
As St. Peter puts it, "Ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls."
The Collect. Almighty God, who hast given thine only Son to be unto us both a sacrifice for sin, and also an ensample of godly life; Give us grace that we may always most thankfully receive that his inestimable benefit, and also daily endeavour ourselves to follow the blessed steps of his most holy life; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle.i Peter ii. 19.
The Gospel. St. John x. 2.
Easter I, April 11, 1999 ("Low Sunday")
St. John's account of what happened on the first Easter is a drama in three acts. Act I was the gospel on Easter Day: Mary Magdalene goes to Jesus' tomb; she sees the stone rolled away from the mouth of the cave; she runs back and tells the disciples; Peter and John run to the tomb; Peter barges in first; they both see the shroud; with his characteristic lack of humility John says he believed, but he admits he could not have believed completely because neither of them had considered the fact that the Hebrew Bible said the Messiah was going to rise from the dead.
Act II has only two players - Mary Magdalene and Jesus himself. Mary thinks Jesus is the gardener -- the cemetery caretaker -- so she asks him, "Somebody seems to have stolen my friend's body out of his tomb. Could you please tell me where it is?" Jesus calls her by name, and she recognizes him (his sheep know him because he can call us all by name); then she tries to hang onto him, but he says, "You don't have to do that, because I'm not going back to heaven yet." She runs to tell the others again, and earns for herself the title "The apostle of the apostles."
In Act III -- which is this Sunday's gospel -- it is evening, and the disciples are holed up in a locked room, because they are afraid that what happened to Jesus on Friday is about to happen to them. Jesus walks through the walls to appear among them and says, "Peace" which means "Don't be scared - I'm not a ghost." Then he showed them the wounds in his hands and side, and St. John reports, "Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord." Then he says, "As my Father sent me, I send you." The Greek word we translate "send" is the word from which we get the word "apostle." An apostle is a person who is sent out.
After he had the disciples pretty well convinced that he was really alive again in his body, Jesus needed to figure out a way in which the experience of the resurrection could be passed on into the future. The original disciples could tell people they had seen him dead on Friday, and alive again on Sunday, but forty days later Jesus was going to go back to heaven, so the evidence that convinced them would not be available any more.
On Easter night Jesus did two things to insure that the experience of the resurrection would go on into the future - as we know it has been passed along for the two thousand years since it happened. The first thing he did was to set up a group of people whose main job is to proclaim the resurrection and keep it alive in their preaching and teaching.
Those people who are witnesses of the resurrection are the church's apostles - the sent-out ones. On Easter night Jesus breathed the breath of God which is the Holy Ghost onto the original eleven, and that made them the church's first bishops. They went out and made other bishops who made other bishops in an unbroken line of apostolic succession which stretches from the original eleven down to me and my fellow bishops.
Bishops have a number of responsibilities. One of them is to confirm people as I am here to do this evening - but my main responsibility is to tell you that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead - and that if you are in him, you will rise from the dead too. A church which tolerates bishops who deny the resurrection has no claim to be a real church at all.
Beside the witness of the apostolic church, the other main way we experience Christ's resurrection within time is through forgiveness. Jesus died to reconcile us to God by forgiving our sins. He rose from the dead to become our mediator and advocate -- the one who pleads our case before God. The only case we have is, "Jesus died to forgive me."
As he sent the apostle bishops out to proclaim his resurrection, Jesus also gave them the power to forgive sins, saying, "Whosoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosoever sins ye retain, they are retained." Your week in and week out experience of the resurrection comes when you confess your sins and receive absolution. You leave the world of sin and death behind and enter the world of forgiveness and new life.
The power to forgive sins is not some sort of dark, medieval, Roman Catholic addition to the original simple faith. It is a power Jesus gave all the apostles on Easter night and which they passed on through their own hands. In our Prayer Book's service for the ordination of a priest, I quote this passage from St. John as I share with every new priest my own apostolic power to forgive.
So we live the resurrection by being members of the apostolic church - a church centered around the Biblical office of the bishop - a witness to the resurrection - and we live the resurrection every time we have our sins forgiven through the blood Jesus shed for us on the cross.
As St. Paul puts it, "In that Christ died, he died unto sin once, but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord."
The Collect. Almighty Father, who hast given thine only Son to die for our sins, and to rise again for our justification; Grant us so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness, that we may always serve thee in pureness of living and truth; through the merits of the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle. i John V. 4.
The Gospel. St. John xx. 19.
Job says, "Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower and is cut down, he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not." Job agrees that this life is precisely what the Prayer Book says it is--transitory--passing away.
Job finds more to be hopeful about in the cyclical processes of nature than he does in what looks like the doom of mankind, saying, "There is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease ... but man dieth and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?"
Then Job finally gets around to asking the ultimate question, "if a man die, shall he live again?" If a man die, shall he live again?
The Easter proclamation is that God's answer to Job's question is a resounding, "Yes." Jesus Christ who was dead and buried on Friday was alive again on Sunday--and not alive in some symbolic or spiritual or misty or filmy way--but risen out of his tomb in a transformed body.
His physicality after the resurrection shocked his disciples, so he had to eat a piece of broiled fish and then some candy in front of them to show that he wasn't just some sort of apparition or hallucination.
And then Jesus asked the disciples, "Why are ye troubled, and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have."
Because we have been joined to Jesus' body in the sacrament of baptism, we have God's guarantee that what happened to Jesus is exactly what will happen to us. Jesus was born, we are born. Jesus lived, we live. Jesus died, if he doesn't come back first we shall die.
Jesus rose from his tomb in a transformed body, we shall rise from our graves in transformed bodies. Jesus went to heaven to be with his Father forever, we shall go to heaven to be with both of them forever. As St. Paul tells us this morning, "When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory."
Job asks, "if a man die, shall he live again?" The Spirit of God replies, "In Adam all die; even so in Christ shall all be made alive."
The Collect. ALMIGHTY God, who through thine only-begotten Son Jesus Christ hast overcome death, and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life; We humbly beseech thee that, as by thy special grace preventing us thou dost put into our minds good desires, so by thy continual help we may bring the same to good effect; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost ever, one God, world without end. Amen.
This Collect is to be said daily throughout Easter Week.
The Epistle. Colossians iii. 1.
The Gospel. St. John xx. 1.
Revised April 5, 1999