EASTER – April 8, 2006

Christmas and Easter: they are the two principal feasts in the Church's year and in our lives as Christians. People who don't go to church any other time during the year, make a very good effort to be in church on Christmas and Easter. That's not to praise or take to task. It just points out how important Christmas and Easter are in our Christian lives.

Yet if we would compare the two feasts, Easter comes out a distant second to Christmas all the way around: in the time we prepare for it, in the time we celebrate it, and in the symbols that represent it.

We spend weeks, sometimes months, getting ready for Christmas. We decorate the house, buy presents, bake goodies, plan visits with family and friends. We don't do that for Easter. Oh, we may have dinner with the family, and there may be some colored eggs around the house, and Easter baskets for the kids, but that is it. What we do to prepare for Easter is minimal compared to what we do to prepare for Christmas.

The celebration of Easter ends on Easter day: not so with Christmas. In fact we can celebrate the Twelve Days of Christmas if we want to; and many people do. The Monday after Christmas still finds us in the Christmas spirit. Easter Monday is, well, Monday; and we all know about Mondays: rainy days and Mondays are almost synonymous.

When it comes to symbols, there is also no comparison. Again, Easter comes in a very distant second. Christmas has the manger and the star; the Magi and the Shepherds; Jesus, Mary and Joseph; poinsettias, holly and mistletoe; Christmas trees and Christmas lights; Santa Claus and reindeer; and on and on. There is something very warm and very sentimental about Christmas symbols. That's as it should be. After all, Christmas celebrates the birth of a baby; and everything about babies is warm and sentimental.

When it comes to Easter, we really only have two symbols: this Easter Candle and the empty tomb. Oh, yes, there is the Easter Bunny. But even the Easter Bunny pales in comparison to Santa Claus.

Yet Easter deserves better, for it is really the most important day of the year as far as our life of faith is concerned. Maybe that is why when we compare the symbols of Christmas and Easter, the Christmas symbols, even though they outnumber Easter symbols ten- to twenty-to-one, Christmas' symbols pale in comparison to Easter's.

This Easter candle is the symbol of Jesus' resurrection and is a reminder of ours. It is also a reminder of what our lives are to be like as followers of Jesus. In a few moments we will renew our baptismal vows. We will promise that with God's help we will do our best every day to live out our faith. We will promise that with God's help we will be like a brightly burning candle, showing other people through our lives what it means to be a Christian. We will promise that with God's help we will light the way, be a shining example to others – just like this candle.

What happens so often is that we are not that; we don't always do our best every day; we don't always show the right way; we aren't always good examples. What happens is that at times when it comes time for us to be that good example, to lead the way, we blow out the light. The fortunate part of it, though, is that God always seems to re-light, rekindle the candle. We are like those trick birthday candles that no matter how often we blow them out, they re-light themselves. No matter how often we quench the light, our light, God seems to re-light it, somehow in some way. Thanks be to God for that!

Then there is the other Easter symbol: the empty tomb. It doesn't shine like a candle or like the Christmas star. We can't decorate it as we do the Christmas tree. We don't place an empty tomb on our mantle as we do the manger scene. We don't do anything with an empty tomb. It is just there in all its starkness, in all its emptiness, in all its, if you will, nothingness. But the empty tomb is real.

When we look into that empty tomb, we are asked one simple question: "What do you see?" There are two possible answers. The first is, "I see nothing. I see an empty tomb." The other answer is, "I see everything as if it is lit by a thousand candles."

Jesus' tomb that Easter Sunday morning was empty. There is no doubt about that historically. Why was it empty? Was it because Jesus' disciples had stolen the body as the authorities said? It is very easy to believe that that is what happened. It is easy to believe in an empty tomb, especially for those who believe that Jesus was no more than a very good man done in by his enemies but whose followers stole the body to make Jesus out to be someone other than simply the victim of religious persecution. Then faith in Jesus is also empty. It amounts to nothing. It may be hero worship, but no more than that.

After all, thousands of people before Jesus and thousands after Jesus have died similar deaths, victims of religious persecution. Every day, in fact, good, innocent people die. They die in wars; they die in accidents; they die at the hands of crazed gunmen. When they die, they are buried, even buried as heroes many times. But if we would go to their tombs, we would not find them empty. Jesus' was.

When you and I look into that emptiness, we see not just an empty tomb, devoid of a body that was stolen. We see a tomb empty because the one buried there was raised up to new life by God the Father. We look into that empty tomb and see not darkness but light, the light of our life. God raised Jesus from the dead, emptied the tomb, not because Jesus was a hero, not because Jesus was innocent, but because God is more powerful than the forces that killed Jesus. No, God did not have to raise Jesus; but God did.

Why? Only God really knows. God did not have to raise Jesus from the dead, but God did. Or did He? That's the question the empty tomb asks each of us every day. Did God raise Jesus from the dead? If God did, why? Well, it really doesn't matter why, does it? What does matter is that if you and I believe that God did in fact raise Jesus from the dead that Easter morning, what are you and I doing about it? That's the question.

The answer is this candle. It is the reminder to each of us that, as we will soon say in the Creed, we believe Jesus "was crucified, died, and was buried" and "on the third day he rose again." It also means, and only means, that our belief in Jesus, our belief in His resurrection, our belief in the empty tomb is lived out when we daily continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship; when we break bread together at the Eucharist; when we persevere in resisting evil and when we don't, repent and return to the Lord; when we proclaim by word and example the Gospel; when we seek and serve Jesus in all persons, loving our neighbors as we love ourselves. If we do that, when we look into that tomb this morning, what we will see is not nothing, not emptiness, but everything: life now and life everlasting. Happy Easter!

I ask you to turn to page 292 in the Prayer Book to not only profess this faith of ours in Jesus' resurrection, but also to profess what this candle and the empty tomb remind us of: our responsibility to daily be the light to others leading them to Jesus Christ by the way we live our lives. Please stand.