March 27, 2016: "Easter Day: Dying to Live" Fr. Carey Stone



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Easter Day C’16
27 March 2016
Is.65.17-25; Ps.117
I Cor.15.19-26; Jn.20.1-18
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
North Little Rock, Arkansas
The Rev. Carey Stone

If you die before you die then when you die you won’t die, In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Alleluia – Alleluia – Alleluia - Alleluia!!!

I just had to say that glorious word that means, “God be praised”!
Why do we praise God especially on this day? This is the Day of resurrection when Christ came out of the tomb triumphing over the grave and death. But how do we really know? We can go back to historical records and find that Jesus was crucified but there is no historical record that proves a resurrection ever happened. The Gospels do testify to the fact that he was raised to life again including the passage we heard today.

Mary Magdalene was the first to witness the risen Christ and went back to the disciples and witnessed to this fact. But how do we really know? If we think of the resurrection as an event in the past some 2,000 years ago or worse we see it as a hoax then we simply resign it to history with finality. If the resurrection is reserved for the after life sometime in the future then life in the present is considerably undervalued.


In the name of this belief much harm has been and is today perpetrated upon people of other faiths and cultures who see things differently. The belief that only values a future resurrection creates a view where our environment is ignored at best and at the worst promotes its plunder and abuse. The needs of the poor are looked over in lieu of some second coming that is surely ‘right around the corner’ (although its been two-thousand years) and will finally solve all of their problems of hunger and poverty.

If the resurrection were just a single event in history the Christian faith would have probably died out a couple of decades after Jesus’ death. On the other hand, if the only resurrection that is important is the future one that will happen on some day that none of us can know, then the real and present created world in which we live along with the all the human beings who are different than us, goes down the tubes while we wait for that distant Day.

The past we cannot go back and change and the future is an unknown beyond the horizon; that leaves us with the present – the here and now. What if the resurrection is much more than a single event in time but a perpetual phenomenon of New Life that happened to his followers and continues to happen today?

Looking back at his early followers we see Mary Magdalene a young woman with a checkered past whom the scripture says had seven devils. Although she probably wasn’t a prostitute like some Church historians have said, but we can say that her passions were misplaced and her life had been a series of dead ends. Death was beginning to call for her but this was not to be. One fine day she ran into a former carpenter turned Rabbi from Nazareth, called Jesus. As she drew near to him her heart began to race and to burn with a new passion. But this passion was one that she had never felt. This passion brought unbridled joy rather than guilt and shame! This passion caused hope to leap inside her body! This passion was calling her to new life rather than to continue following in the ways of death. As we see in our reading today Mary would become the first witness to the resurrection of Christ. New parts of Mary had come to life!

{If you die before you die then when you die you won’t die}

There is a large cast of biblical characters who experienced the New Life of resurrection in this life before they ever tasted physical death. St. Peter the clumsy and audacious fisherman who turned coward at the crucifixion became known as “the rock” the bold witness and first bishop upon which Christ built his church. New parts of Peter had come to life!

{If you die before you die then when you die you won’t die}

St. Paul who was first known as Saul had been traveling throughout the middle east as one of histories first middle eastern terrorists, hunting down Christians and seeing to it that many were put to death. But that was not to be the end of his story. He was struck blind in an encounter with the resurrected Christ on the road to Damascus. In that encounter the scales fell away from his eyes and he became the leading apostle in the early Church.

{If you die before you die then when you die you won’t die}

From generation to generation the chain reaction that started at the tomb has continued. Time does not permit to talk of the testimony of the saints through the centuries who have experienced the death of their old selves and resurrection and New Life before they died.

{If you die before you die then when you die you won’t die.}

Now into the present every time someone reaches the end of their own human resources admits they are powerless and calls upon God their lives are forever changed and New Life springs up.

Through death comes life. The first resurrection required a corpse so it should come as no surprise that our resurrections in the present may require some bouts of depression, out of control anxiety, a divorce, or bankruptcy, a debilitating disease or the loss of a job or a career, a seriously ill child, basically anything that can bring us to our knees and reveal that our false ego-centric selves will not be able to bring us through to the other side.

Why do I believe in the resurrection? Because I have seen in the faces of strangers and ordinary folks the face of Christ, like addicts who are now clean and sober and in their right minds again, or someone who has lost a dear loved but their prolonged grief was used by God to transform their lives. The ripples of resurrection continue to happen in the lives of ordinary people who have come to the end of themselves who by God’ grace have let go and let God who have said with Christ, “Not my will but thy will be done.”
{If you die before you die then when you die you won’t die!}
And finally from author Richard Bach, “What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls a butterfly.”

Alleluia. Christ is risen!