Cole J. Banning

As preached at the weekend Eucharists at St. Thomas' Episcopal Church in Glassboro, NJ on the evening of Saturday, April 15 and the morning of Sunday, April 16. Long-time readers of this blog might recognize large portions of this sermon as being lifted from this unpreached sermon, written thirteen years ago. I thought about writing a completely new sermon, but I couldn't imagine saying anything else on this text without saying this first.

Acts 2:14a, 22-32
Psalm 16
1 Peter 1:3-9
John 20:19-31

The second Sunday of Easter is my favorite Sunday in the entire liturgical year. Part of the reason is because the message it gives us is not simple to decipher or easy to hear; it challenges us, invites us to engage the story of St. Thomas just as Thomas engaged the physical body of the Risen Christ: fully, critically, and reverently.

Even before I was baptized a Christian–perhaps especially before I was baptized a Christian–the Gospel passage we heard today resonated with me as I put myself in the sandals of a skeptical St. Thomas. Even today, 16 years after my baptism, the challenges which it has given me in the past only serve to enrichen and deepen my response to it in the present.

These are the words of Jesus the Christ to the doubting St. Thomas: "Blessed are they who have not seen and yet believe."

In a world where ignorance and uncritical thinking are commonplace, where religious intolerance is rampant and fanaticism begets horrific violence, where people reject the scientific evidence on various subjects including the efficacy of vaccines or of masks, these are challenging words. It seems, after all, like the absolutely last thing this world needs is more uncritical belief without evidence.

But as I've reflected over this Gospel passage over the years, these are also words that have come to bring me much hope and joy. Imagine all the things Jesus could have said, but didn't. Jesus could have cursed St. Thomas, just as Jesus had cursed the fig tree which had not born fruit out of season. Words of reprimand, of condemnation, of anger or disappointment, could have followed. Jesus could have berated St. Thomas for his lack of belief.

But none of those things happened. Instead: "Blessed are they who have not seen and yet believe."

But the truest, deepest source of joy isn't just that we aren't, say, damned to eternal torment in hell forever for our doubts, for our unbelief. It's this: that when Thomas reached out for a deeper, relational connection with Christ, demanded to see and touch and feel Jesus, the Risen Christ appeared. We are not required to hold blind faith, to believe without seeing. When we need Jesus, when we ask for Jesus, Jesus shows up. Every time, without fail, just like Jesus did for St. Thomas.

Well, maybe not just like. If you expect Jesus to show up bodily in front of you, to give you a chance to put your fingers in Jesus' side, you're probably going to be disappointed--probably. I suppose I can't, and I won't, rule out the possibility completely--but if it happens to you, you're probably best off not telling me about it, because I probably won't believe you. If you're looking for some grand supernatural violation of the natural order of God's creation, you're going to be disappointed; at best, you'll get a violation of the established rules as we currently understand them. And if you expect "proof" for some set of propositional truths, to the exclusion of some other set of propositions, some final demonstration that you're right and everyone else is wrong, you're almost certainly going to be disappointed. Faith, at least as I've come to understand it, doesn't work like that.

"First of all," writes the liberation theologian Leonardo Boff in his book Liberation and Ecology, "comes the experience of mystery, the experience of God":

Only afterward does faith supervene. Faith is not primarily adhesion to a teaching that gives access to revelation and the supernatural. Then faith would be tantamount to ideology, in the sense of an idea or belief inculcated in someone from outside. This extrinsic character of so-called faith can give rise to various forms of fundamentalism and religious warfare. All groups tend to affirm their own truths to the exclusion of all others. Faith is meaningful and possesses truth only when it represents a response to an experience of God made personally and communally. Then faith is the expression of an encounter with God which embraces all existence and feeling--the heart, the intellect, and the will.

This may well be the purest description of my personal theology as has ever been written; I know that those words have been written on my heart ever since I first read them as a college student 19 years ago, in 2004. (If you've done the math, you know that was about 3 years before my baptism.) And I cannot think about the story of St. Thomas without thinking of the words of Boff I've just read.

Jesus' appearance to St. Thomas did not put an end to the possibly of doubt or disbelief. Imagine what we might wonder were we to find ourselves in Thomas' sandals. Is it really Jesus--and not, say, Jesus' identical twin? Or a clone? Could it be a trick with mirrors, or a delusion of the mind? Can we be sure that Jesus really died, and wasn't just resuscitated by some scientifically-explainable process (and never underestimate the ingenuity of scientists in constructing explanations, it's what they do)?

Jesus' appearance to St. Thomas did not make these questions impossible. Instead, it made them irrelevant. Because in that moment, the reality of Christ's presence transcended all necessity to explain how or whether or why.

But if we cannot expect the Risen Christ to show up bodily in our living rooms and instruct us to touch Christ's wounds, then how, then, can we experience Christ in the twenty-first century? How do we have the type of experience St. Thomas did? Where do we find this sacred mystery? Primarily, we can do this through the Sacraments, the outward and visible signs of inward, invisible grace--and most especially the Eucharist, the sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood, where we receive Jesus Christself into us in order to strengthen and renew our identity as Christ's mystical Body. We encounter Christ communally and relationally, through our relationships with others, our work for justice and works of mercy: we see Jesus in the face of the stranger who is the least of our sisters or brothers or siblings. And also in solitude and contemplation, through prayer and sacramentals--but like with Thomas, our engagement with Christ must necessarily begin with our engagement with our community, in our challenging and being challenged by our sisters and brothers and siblings in Christ.

All of these things sustain us and make possible the type of holistic faithful response Boff talks about. They don't prove some truth claim and disprove some other; they don't have to, because what they're doing is far more important. That we know Christ is so much infinitely more important than that we know that Christ exists. That we know the Father is so much more important than that we know the Father exists. That we know the Spirit is so much more--well, I think you get the idea.

Thomas rejected holding a truth claim about Christ in favor of knowing the Christ, feeling and touching and seeing the Christ. And Jesus showed up. Jesus always shows up.

It must be acknowledged that even though Jesus always shows up, it doesn't always feel like Jesus has shown up. Sometimes, this is a consequence of us turning away from Christ, of pushing God away, but more often it is simply the natural symptom of exhaustion and despair.

At our lowest, it's easy to feel abandoned by God. This is so natural and human that even Jesus felt that way on the Cross. I believe with all my heart that even in those moments–especially in those moments–that God is present in our lives, but I have no fancy words of persuasion, no clever proof, to convince someone who doesn't experience Christ's Presence in their life that Jesus is indeed there.

I was a philosophy major; I’ve studied those sorts of supposed proofs. They had impressive names: the ontological argument, the cosmological argument, the teleological argument. I have to say I found the content of the arguments themselves far less impressive, far less persuasive. I suppose I hold out hope that one day a version of one of these arguments might be put forth which accomplishes what I believe they have hitherto failed to do, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

And the interesting thing is that even if such a proof were to exist, how little it would in the end actually prove. It might get us to a First Cause, a Prime Mover, a Necessary Being. But probably not to the God of the Matriarchs and the Patriarchs, the God who delights in our joys and who shares in our suffering, the God whose great works have been attested to in the Holy Scriptures. In short, not to Jesus Christ. That requires relationship: asking Jesus to show up, and being receptive when–not if, but when–Jesus does show up.

Now, don't get me wrong, there's an important role for theology, in using the tools of Scripture, tradition, and natural reason to interrogate my experience of God and your experience of God in an attempt to arrive at objective truth. Such a process was used by the early Church to formulate the historic creeds which we affirm as basic Christian orthodoxy. But such an exercise must always begin with the presence, the experience of God, or else it ends up lacking reality. It becomes a mere logic puzzle, akin to figuring out how a fictitious farmer gets his fictitious cabbage and fictitious goat and fictitious wolf across a fictitious river using a fictitious boat.

So faced with a person who cannot detect the presence of Jesus in their life, I can only testify to the ways–the small, subtle yet meaningful ways–that God has been present in my life, and pray that Jesus will make Christself known to those persons in the fullness of time.

Jesus tells us that Thomas' type of faith isn't the only type of faith which is valid or acceptable to God: "Blessed are they who have not seen and yet believe." This is no doubt an important corrective to the temptation to judge the faith of others, to declare it too uncritical, too simple, too uninformed or unenlightened. I have known Episcopalians who needed that correction, and there have been times when I’ve needed that correction.

But I firmly believe--I cannot but believe--that those of us who are called to the faith of St. Thomas are blessed, too. How can we not be, when Jesus always shows up?

I love the second Sunday of Easter because it is this truth--that Jesus shows up, that Jesus always shows up--which fills me with joy like no other New Testament message can. The story of St. Thomas speaks to me so powerfully on a personal level, it is his story which fills me with hope like no other New Testament story can, because in Thomas I find a vision of a mature, questioning, critical faith which is not thwarted, but rather manages to find its fulfillment in Christ's Presence.

Jesus shows up. Jesus always shows up.

Alleluia!

As preached at the midweek outdoor Eucharist at St. Thomas' Episcopal Church in Glassboro, NJ on the evening of Wednesday, April 28, 2021.

Isaiah 52:7-10
Psalm 2:1-13
Ephesians 4:7-8,11-16
Mark 1:1-15

St. Mark’s Gospel is many Christians’ favorite gospel. They are attracted to its brevity, its ability to get right to the point, its terse pacing. It is the first-century equivalent of a page-turner.

Now, my own tastes have always run towards the more verbose gospels: the comprehensive narrative of St. Luke, the theological reflections of St. John. But in these midweek sermons, I try to emulate St. Mark.

In our epistle reading today, St. Paul writes that the gift has been given to some that they should be apostles; to some, prophets; to some, evangelists; to some, pastors and teachers. But we should not interpret that as saying that the charism of evangelism was just given to four men two thousand years ago. John the Baptizer preached the good news of the forgiveness of sins before Jesus' ministry had even begun. The author or authors of the book we know as the book of the prophet Isaiah preached the good news of the Messiah, of the suffering servant, of God's Chosen One to bring justification to God's people--centuries before the birth of one Jesus of Nazareth, son of Mary. And of course, the first disciples to profess the Resurrection were women.

It is the calling of every generation to find new ways to profess the Good News of Jesus Christ in ways that are resonant to their culture and meaningful in their place and time. Some have been gifted with the charism of evangelization in special measure, but we are all called to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ in our particular way. Part of our baptismal covenant is the promise to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ”.

What we should take most from the evangelists in general, and St. Mark in particular, is that the Gospel, the evangelion, is good news. In his typical get-to-the-point fashion, St. Mark tells us this in the first sentence of his Gospel: “Here begins the good news of Jesus Christ.”

"How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who brings good news," writes (deutero-)Isaiah. We profess the Good News of Jesus Christ, not only because Jesus commanded us to make disciples from the people of every nation (although surely that is sufficient reason), but because it’s human nature to share good news. It’s such a natural impulse that there are several places in St. Mark’s Gospel where Jesus has to explicitly tell his listeners not to share it, because it wasn’t yet the proper time for it to become publicly known.

I’m dressed casually today because I took the day off work for a doctor’s appointment, where we discussed the fact that--thanks be to God--I successfully lowered my A1C levels over the last three months from 7.8 to 6.2. Father Todd already knew this because I told him and J------- on Monday evening. I told my entire Bible study on Tuesday evening. I told my coworkers while we were in the office on Monday morning. I told my parents on Saturday when I first got the results. When we receive good news, we want to tell other people about it. And what does it say of us if we are more willing to tell others about our medical conditions than about our Lord and Savior?

When we have a particularly good piece of news, for example that of a marriage engagement or the addition to a family of a child through pregnancy or adoption, we might even plan a party or a celebratory dinner. And that’s why we are gathered together this evening, to celebrate the Lord’s Supper.

And so in that spirit of celebration, of joy, of expectation, we raise our voices to join the chorus of the evangelists, the saints and apostles, and the entire host of heaven, as we say:

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Amen.

Just as theology of the Atonement should not treat the Incarnation merely as a necessary prerequisite for the Cross, neither should it treat Easter morning as a mere afterthought, but rather as an integral element of the story of our salvation. Does St. Paul not say,

If Christ is not raised, then all of our preaching has been meaningless--and everything you've believed has been just as meaningless. If Christ is not raised, your faith is worthless. You are still in your sins. (1 Cor. 15:4, 7, The Inclusive Bible)

Now, I don't take this to mean that we necessarily need to understand the Resurrection as a literal event within history--although neither do I deny the historicity of the Resurrection. I wasn't present at the Empty Tomb, so I cannot testify to what was there. If the Resuurection qua historical event was necessary to reconcile humanity to God, then that's how it happened. But what I can, and as a Christian must, testify to is the importance and indispensability of the bodily Resurrection of the Christ as a spiritual truth.

Because of this, I don't think it's sufficient either to "demythologize it to mean only the restitution of faith in the hearts of the disciples," a view Roger Olson ascribes to Bultmann and Tillich. If anything, we need a postmodern, postliberal remythologization of the Resurrection to avoid the dual modernist errors of liberal demythologization on the one hand and conservative hyperliteralism--in truth, its own form of demythologization--on the other. If nothing else, we need to understand the bodily (and we must retain the "bodily" as part of the mytheme, lest we risk Gnosticism) Resurrection of Christ as a profound metaphysical event which eternally alters the relationship between embodied humanity and God regardless of whether that event was instantiated within historical time and space. As the Rt. Rev. David Edward Jenkins is reported to have said, the Resurrection is "not just a conjuring trick with bones," but something deeper and far more mysterious.

And it is this understanding of the profundity of the Resurrection that I believe it is vitally important to bring with us to our understanding of the Atonement. In some understandings of the Atonement, the Resurrection seems to be little more than a divine encore--after doing the really difficult work of reconciling humanity to God on the Cross, Jesus rises from the dead as one last miraculous work to allow the disciples to go home feeling satisfied. This is problematic in many ways, not least because it focuses the moment of redemption within murder and suffering rather than in the promise of new life.

It is out of these sort of concerns that leads Tony Jones to say of the Ransom Captive theory of the Atonement that

it does have the upper hand over PSA [Penal Substitutionary Atonement] in one regard: in the Ransom Captive understanding of the atonement, Christ’s resurrection is central.

The one thing that Satan doesn’t understand is that death cannot vanquish God. That lack of understanding leads to Satan’s downfall, and to the ultimate liberation of humanity from Satan’s clutches.

This is because under the Ransom Captive understanding, the resurrection of Jesus allows God to "trick" Satan and "have his cake (the freedom of the human race) and eat it too (the resurrection of his son)." Of course, both Penal Substitutionary Atonement and the Ransom Captive theory have fairly fatal flaws which I will no doubt consider when we reach Part 5 of this series, on God's authority, but it does show the way in which the presence or absence of a Resurrection emphasis might be used as a criterion in evaluating theologies of the Atonement.

Another theology of the Atonement, somewhat related to the Ransom Captive theory, which also scores high marks in Resurrection emphasis is Christus Victor, which is of course Latin for "Christ the Victor." In this understanding, Jesus' death is not seen as any type of payment, either to Satan or to God the Parent, except perhaps in a highly figurative sense. Instead, by moving into death and embracing mortality fully, and then moving on to new life in the Resurrection, Christ victoriously breaks the hold death and sin have over all of humanity. The problem, insofar as there is one, is that, as Wikipedia notes, "the Christus Victor view of the Atonement is not so much a rational systematic theory as it is a drama, a passion story of God triumphing over the Powers and liberating humanity from the bondage of sin."

Acts 9:1-6, (7-20)
Psalm 30
Revelation 5:11-14
John 21:1-19

"And one was a doctor," goes the hymn, (#293 in the 1982 Hymnal, full lyrics) "and one was a queen, and one was a shepherdess on the green; [. . .] And one was a soldier, and one was a priest, and one was slain by a fierce wild beast." There are many different Saints in today's readings, too, and in many ways they are as different from each other as the Saints in the hymn.

There's Saint Paul, who started out as Saul of Tarsus, persecuting Christians, but was transformed when Christ appeared to him on the road to Damascus to become not only the writer of the largest chunk of the canonical Christian Scriptures, but to make voyage after voyage planting new churches and uniting the existing ones in the message of the Good News of Christ.

There's Peter, the Rock of the Church, who dropped everything when he saw Christ, put on his clothes--because he wanted to look his best for the Risen Christ--and swam to Jesus. Today's Gospel reminds us that Peter was called to martyrdom, hung on an upside-down cross, that it was an essential part of his vocation as the Rock of the Church to be at odds with the powerful in his society

There's Nathaniel, whom you have to feel sorry for. Who here can tell me anything about Nathaniel? (Wikipedia tells me he is identified with Bartholomew, one of the Twelve who is, really, not really any less forgettable.) I'll have forgotten he was even in this story by next week. I have the deepest respect and admiration for the Nathaniels of the world, those people who do the hard work of just being where they are called to be, doing the hard work, and getting none of the glory.

There are the sons of Zebedee and the other disciples, who are not even given names.

Once again this week, I find that I am a Thomas.

Thomas looks around at what he has on hand; he finds himself in a fishing boat. Rather than viewing the fishing boat as a distraction to the path in Christ he is called to follow, he uses the boat to bring himself to Christ--and he brings with him fish to eat, given to him through Jesus' power, so that he and Nathaniel and Peter can share a meal with Jesus, to break bread and share this time together as a Church, and to partake in the goodness of creation.

Last week, Thomas insisted on being able to see and touch the physical body of the Risen Christ. This week, he brings Jesus fish to eat. For Thomas, the Risen Christ is a not a spiritual ruler of a distant land, but someone who is always and already deeply enmeshed in the physical world of Creation. Tradition tells us that Thomas was a builder by trade; he was a man for whom the physical was never unimportant, who would have known intimately about the goodness of creation.

Tradition tells us that Thomas, like Peter, was also martyred, dying as he lived, immersed in that physicality.

Scripture does not adjudicate between these approaches. It is a good and rightful thing for St. Peter to put his clothes on and swim to Jesus; it is a good and rightful thing for Sts. Thomas and Nathaniel and the others to take the boat to Jesus and bring the fish with them. The Church in its earliest beginnings has thus been called to be a Broad Church, to encourage a diversity of worship and a diversity of mission. There is room in the Church for Pauls and Peters and Nathaniels and Thomases, for both Marys and Marthas.

It takes all types to make a Church.

The Church takes all of these approaches and fashions them into something greater than any of them individually: something which is, in its unity, holy, catholic, and apostolic. Think of the image from the Revelation to St. John the Divine: millions and myriads singing together for the greater glory of God. I don't imagine they all would take the melody line. That would be a weak sort of song for so many voices--sort of like singing "If You're Happy and You Know It" when you have the resources for Handel's "Alleluia Chorus"--or rather for something which would be to the Handel as the Handel is to "If You're Happy and You Know It." No, that level of beauty requires harmony, difference complementing itself. Harmonies within harmonies, even, exploiting the fact that we are all different: we are sopranos and mezzo-sopranos and contraltos, tenors and baritones and basses.

Jesus' command to Peter is, "Feed My Sheep." Jesus' command to Nathaniel and Thomas and the unnamed disciples is, "Bring some of the fish that you have caught, and come and have breakfast." Jesus' command to Saul is "Get up and enter the city." Jesus' command to Ananias is, "Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. Go in and lay your hands on him so that he might regain his sight."

What is Jesus' command to us? How do we discern where we, individually, fit in within the Church?

We know that any command we might receive will only be a futher refinement and elaboration of the two greatest commandments: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" and "Love your neighbor as yourself." So we must ask ourselves how, given our unique skills and abilities, our own unique temperaments and interests, our own unique connections to the world around us, how best we are able to live out a love for God and for each other and for ourselves. What is it that we love to do? What are we good at? What do we care about?

Of course, sometimes we are called to things we are not very good at--so that we may become better, or that we may learn humility, or just because somebody needs to do it and there is no one else. Often we are called to do things which we don't necessarily want to do, exactly, as Ananias at first did not want to heal Saul. But we recognize, at those times, that there exists a need, and that God has put us there,

What needs do you see in the world around you? How can you work with your sisters and brothers and siblings in Christ to fill those needs?

If we each live out our lives in full response to the answers to these questions, answers which will in all likelihood be different for each and every one of us, then the Church's mission will be complete--not complete in the sense of finished, not yet, but in the sense of being full, having no lack in its present-day efforts to build a just and peaceful Kingdom. This is not a fairy-book fantasy: with the power and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, with God's prevenient grace, it is not only possible, but imperative. It is the mission of the Church, and each of our own individual vocations acts to support it.

And so, my dear sisters and brothers and siblings in Christ, I return to the words of our hymn: The Saints loved their Lord so dear, so dear, and Christ's love made them strong; and they followed the right for Jesus' sake the whole of their good lives long. And there's not any reason--no, not the least--why we shouldn't be saints, too.

Alleluia.

Elizabeth is going back and writing her unpreached sermons for all the Sunday's she's missed ever since we both fell off the ball back in Advent. I'm not quite that ambitious, but I do want to get back into the habit, even if this sermon is only about 2/3 of the length I wanted it to be. :(

Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:19-26
Luke 24:1-12

1st Easter

We are a resurrection people.

Note the plural, and just as importantly the collective form: we are not resurrection persons, a "resurrection me" plus a "resurrection you" plus a "resurrection her." It is only communally, in the collective, in the unity of our identity as the Body of Christ, that we are able to fully respond to the resurrection of the Head.

The Scripture passages today speak to this truth. The Easter story is, at least superficially, of course a story about Jesus Christ, about Christ's resurrection. Yet it is a curious fact that, post-Crucifixion, the Gospels spend relatively little time on Jesus Christself. Jesus has already done the job which the Christ was sent to do. It is the Church's job now to continue the work Jesus has already put into motion.

The focus of the Gospel narratives thus shifts dramatically to the experience of the disciples. In today's Gospel passage, we receive the reaction of the women to the empty tomb, experience their confusement, their bedazzlement, and their ultimate understanding, as we relate to them and, later, to the male disciples as the stories' new protagonists.

During the Easter season, we read from the Acts of the Apostles, the only book in the Bible aside from the Gospels and Revelation to actually include Jesus as an explicitly present character. I know that come the Easter season, I always experience a moment of cognitive dissonance when I hear a lay reader read "And Jesus said. . ." from the pulpit. Isn't that the sort of thing which gets read by the priest, from the pulpit or after a Gospel procession? I forget that the Risen Christ has a story to be told, too, and--appropriately enough--the Risen Christ speaks through everyone.

Yet in the passage from Acts assigned to this Sunday, the holiest day of the Christian year, Jesus does not speak. It is St. Peter, the rock upon which the Church--one, holy, catholic, and apostolic--was established, who speaks. We've jumped ahead to a point past the Ascension, past Pentecost, as St. Peter reaffirms the commision of the Church. Once again, the important part of the Easter story isn't what Jesus is doing, but what Christ's Church is doing.

Pentecost is often called the "birthday" of the Church. The truth is that the building of Christ's Church is a process which spans all of human history and which still has not come to its fullest fruition. Pentecost is an important milestone in the history of this community--more of a coming into adulthood than a birth--but it is laughably obvious that Easter is, too. Easter transformed the Church from simply being the disciples of a man, each with her or his own individual loyalties to Jesus, called by Jesus one or two at a time, to a single community united in joint celebration.

And so we gather here today. Like the disciples who hurried back to Jerusalem after meeting Jesus on the road to Emmaus, we gather together with our sisters and brothers and siblings in Christ to proclaim the Easter promise.

This is Easter: this gathering, this congregation (remember "congregation" is merely a noun form of the verb "to congregate"), this reunion of friends, this in-coming of family.

This is the paschal mystery: that having suffered a painful death on the Cross and descended into hell, Christ is risen and present with us here and now, and every day and everywhere, wherever two or more disciples are gathered in Jesus' name.

Three years ago--Easter Even 2007, to be exact--I was baptized into the Christian faith, in this church [or: in a church like this one], before this congregation [or: before a congregation like this one]. Obviously, it was a momentous occasion in my personal faith journey, but it was also a momentous occasion in the life of the Church, as the Body of Christ grew by--well, by more than just more one new member, as across the world new Christians were being welcomed into the Church through the sacrament of Baptism at Easter Vigil services, following the traditions of the early Church in the second and third centuries of the common era. Last night the process was repeated across the world.

"Through baptism on Easter," the Reformed writer Harvey Smit writes, "the new convert participated in the consummation of the Lord's passion and entered into the new life as a Christian sealed in Jesus' resurrection." Let me say that again: "participated in the consummation of the passion." Easter is not a passive day, something which happens simply because the Sunday following the full moon following the first day of spring has finally rolled around on our calendar. Easter is our active engagement and full participation in the life of the Body of the Christ. It is coming to church, reading and listening to holy scripture, receiving and being sustained by the Body and Blood of Christ. It's having a conversation with other members of our parish family in the coffee hour afterwards, and welcoming newcomers and visitors. It is reconciling oneself with God and one's neighbor. It is loving others as oneself. It is working for peace, and for justice. Outside of this context, the story of the Resurrection of Jesus becomes simply, to use the controversial words of Bishop David Edward Jenkins, "just a conjuring trick with bones."

If that were the case, we would indeed be (to use St. Paul's words from today's Epistle reading) "the most pitiable of the human race" indeed! But, St. Paul tells us, "in Christ all will come to life again": we who have been crucified with Christ share equally in Christ's resurrection.

And so, with the Blessed Virgin Mary, with St. Mary Magdalene, St. Peter, St. Paul, the evangelists, and all the saints; with the matriarchs and patriarchs, angels and archangels, and the entire company of heaven, we proclaim, as one Church and with one voice: "Alleluia! Christ is risen." [Congregation, if they're paying attention: ""The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia."]

Alleluia.