He Is Risen Indeed

Next Sunday I've been asked to do the post-Easter sermon at our church, on the topic of "joy". It is the logical conclusion to the subject of the resurrection of Christ that we celebrate today -- the influx of complete joy that could only be caused by our God forgiving our sins, defeating death, giving us true hope, providing us with a real future, and paving the way for reunification between God and man.

It always boggles my mind to see people who put in their two token visits to church -- Easter and Christmas Eve -- yet are never enticed beyond that. In those two holidays, so much joy bursts out that it really can't be contained, but more often than not the real reason isn't examined. It's attributed to goodwill and the happiness of the holidays, yet Christians know that it goes much further than that. We cannot be the producers of complete joy, just the recipients of it.

I look around and see a world in need of some serious joy these days. The economy, wars, politics, injustices, suicides, abortions, family separations, rebellions, untrust, racism, evening news -- these don't spark the excitement of joy in our hearts, just terror at being trapped in the same world as all of this. It's not a basically good world populated by basically good people; it's a corrupt world given over to the devil populated by fallen, broken souls. It's a world in bad need of joy, so bad in fact that it can hardly recognize that joy when it sees it.

Without the resurrection, there is no joy for us, only hopelessness. Without it, we are indeed lost and quite damned. Without it, we face a future as hollow and meaningless as anything else we might make under our own power. Without it, we live a lie when we trundle off to church on Easter morning singing "Up from the grave he arose!" And yet people spend their whole lives striving to deny the resurrection, fighting it, arguing against it. The image of small children being offered the best candy in the world by parents, only for them to kick and scream and bite their way out of accepting it comes to mind.

But with the resurrection... with it there is joy. Ours is not a God of mere words, who said some common-sense things about human decency and then left us to our own means. He is a God of action, who put his life where his mouth was, who came to earth to live as one of us, who offered a second chance to all around him, and who freely gave his life up as a sacrifice so that the wrath of God may not fall upon those who believe, because our sins are washed clean.

On Easter morning, we are emerging from the tomb with Jesus himself, blinking as we step into the sunlight for the first time, feeling the webs of darkness and despair fall away. We shout "He is risen!" because we are risen too, in him. Our joy is made complete, it overflows, it seeks out the dark pain of our life and overwhelms it. Our joy is not a mere fairy tale, but the simple truth. Our joy cannot be denied, even when people shout in our faces to give it up, to grow up, to be as they are. But, like Jesus, we cannot go back into the tomb -- it holds nothing for us.

He is risen. He is risen indeed.