Alleluia Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
What does it mean to say that? How does it make us feel?
It makes me feel joy and amazement.
When I read the story of the first Easter morning (I always imagine a glorious spring morning) I feel the joy and amazement that Mary and Peter and the others felt, first when they met the angels who told them the incredible news that Christ was risen; and then when they met him himself.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Jesus had told his followers that this is what would happen and maybe they thought they believed him but when Jesus was taken away from them and crucified in front of everybody, all they could see was his life coming to an end; Jesus brutally killed. Their world fell apart.
It was one thing to say that you believed Jesus while he was still alive, healing the sick and looking invincible; oh yes it was easy to believe him then when he said he would be killed and then rise again from the dead; when this was all something that was theoretically going to happen in the future.
But a completely different thing when you had actually witnessed his execution; and his suffering; and had seen his body being taken away. When they actually experienced all this; the followers of Jesus panicked and fled; their faith was in tatters.
So it is almost impossible to imagine how they must have felt when they went to the tomb, saw the stone rolled away, heard the news from the angels and then saw him in person. What joy! What amazement!
It’s a very special gift to be able to say ‘I believe we will experience joy once again’ even in the middle of suffering. It’s a very special gift from God to be able to do that.
The prophet Jeremiah was given that gift. He was among the leaders of Judah who were taken away into exile in Babylon and as the captives were marched away, Jeremiah said, we will experience such joy when God brings us home again.
And to explain to the people what it might feel like, Jeremiah said it would be like that time when the people of Israel were being led out of slavery in Egypt and the Pharaoh’s army was chasing after them and God divided the Red Sea so they could pass through in safety and then made the waves close around the pursuing slaver army and the people of Israel danced and sang keeping time with tambourines such was their joy and amazement at being saved by God.
And Peter was given that special gift; that gift to be able to say ‘I believe we will experience joy once again’ even in the middle of suffering. God gave him that gift by showing him and just a few others that Jesus Christ was risen from the dead. And then he filled Peter with his Holy Spirit. And from that time on Peter preached to the people with amazement and joy.
And through his preaching and life and through the preaching and lives of others, God built up his church, so that gift; that special gift has been passed onto us. That gift to be able to say ‘I believe we will experience joy once again’ even in the middle of suffering.
And so here we are.
On Good Friday more people died of coronavirus in this country than on any previous day. More people died of coronavirus in this country on Good Friday than in any other European country on any other day.
We don’t have enough protective equipment for all our health and care workers. We don’t have enough capacity to test people who may be sick. We don’t know if we will have enough ventilators when the hospitals fill up. We don’t know when or even if we will find a vaccine.
We knew in theory that this was going to happen, but now it is happening we find that we are woefully unprepared.
The economic impact of this illness on our country and on the world will be devastating. Will there be enough food for everybody? Will there be enough medicine for everybody?
And how long must we live socially distant lives, cut off from our loved ones? The experts do not agree. The government will not say. Those who are paid to speculate think this could go on for months or even years.
But we, the church, have been given a gift, a special gift from God. It is the gift to be able to say ‘I believe we will experience joy once again’ even in the middle of suffering.
And because we say this we are not afraid. We continue to serve others. We continue to prepare for a future which is full of joy and amazement. This will turn out to be only one more time when people have endured suffering only to experience joy at the last.
Let me try and summarise Peter’s words that have been handed down to us. They contain this special gift of God.
God has no favourites. He reaches out to all of us through Jesus Christ who preaches peace and is the Lord of all. God anointed Jesus with his Holy Spirit which Jesus in turn has passed onto us. Jesus went about doing good and healing the sick to show us that God will use his power with love.
And the earthly powers may have killed Jesus but the heavenly power raised him up on the third day and he appeared to just a few of his followers. And those followers grew and grew in number and so now they number many millions of people. We are many millions of Easter people who have been given the gift of being able to say, even in the midst of all this suffering, ‘I believe we will experience joy once again.’
That’s what it means. That’s how it feels. When we say:
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed. Alleluia!