The Sunday of the Resurrection

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The Sunday of the Resurrection: Easter, April 8, 2007

Acts 10:34-43, Colossians 3:1-4, Luke 24:1-10
St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, West Valley City, UT

A few years ago I had the opportunity to attend the College of Preachers in Washington, DC, for a week of classes on preaching. It is now called the Cathedral College and is part of the National Cathedral. While in Washington I spent a day at The Holocaust Museum. I have been fascinated with this time in history since a student at Granger High School when we staged The Diary of Ann Frank. I have visited the Ann Frank home in Amsterdam two different times. As I walked through the museum I thought of the millions of men, women and children, who were systematically murdered: Jews, gypsies, gay men, the mentally and physically disabled, political prisoners, Jehovah Witnesses, and so many others. As horrifying as it was, it was still out there, long ago and far away.

I saw two elderly couples looking at map of Eastern Europe, showing towns and villages pillaged by the Nazis. As I walk by, one man kneeling and pointing said with a heavy accent, There. I lived there. He spoke in the past tense, but his voice betrayed his reality in the present. With his words still in my ears I entered a room filled with shoes taken from prisoners: thousands of shoes. Shoes taken from many just hours before they were gassed. Others went to slave labor and later to death. I stood alone in the room and wept. Work shoes: Where did you work and what did you do? Open toed sandals: Did you wear these to the park with your children? irl's dress shoes: Did you wear these to a party? Boy's shoes: What games did you like to play? So many shoes. So many questions. Now the museum was about real people; real lives. It became so real for me. There. I lived there.

There. I lived there. I will always remember those words. The personal witness of a man who had lived what I only knew as history. There. I lived there.

All we have of the story we tell today of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the tomb are the stories of those who lived it. The women at the tomb saw it, heard the voices of the angels and reported it to the disciples. Our reading today ends rather conveniently actually. If you were to keep on reading the next verse: But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. Then we have a story of Peter running to the empty tomb to see for himself and then he believed.

And we, living in 2007 are left with the voices of the witnesses: There. I lived there. He is risen, I have seen him. How do we respond? Do we hear it as an idle tale? Or, do we believe the witness of their voices who lived it?

This is why, for me, the reading from the Acts of the Apostles is so key for us today. Luke is quoting Peter; the same Peter who denied Jesus three times at his arrest, the same Peter who ran to the tomb to verify for himself the story of the women. The same Peter who for so long got so much so wrong, and now is filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses....

Peter is saying, There. I lived there. I saw him. We saw him and we ate with him. He is our reality and we give witness to him for your reality. We are his witnesses. There. I lived there.

So we have anew the witness and voice of others; when I was in the Holocaust Museum that voice of witness overwhelmed me as I looked at the room of shoes. When I read the story of the resurrection, the voices of Mary and Peter and Jesus and others overwhelm me as I look at you here, the body of Christ in the world.

I see in your lives and your actions the hands of Christ in the world. I see in your devotion and sacrifice the witness of Christ in the world. Early this morning we gathered for the Great Vigil of Easter. We lit the New Fire of Easter and the Paschal Candle. We baptized four new members into the household of faith. We celebrated the rising of the Son of God from the dead as the sun rose over the Wasatch.

Now we gather as the people of God to remember this story, to say to each other: Christ is in our midst. He is and always shall be. There. I live there. This is our story. This is our response to God's gift of grace to us. This is who we are and what we are about. Christ is in our midst. He is and always shall be.

Soon we will celebrate the Mass of the Resurrection, the Paschal Feast: Holy gifts for a holy people; be what you see, receive what you are: The gifts of God for you the people of God.