On this Sunday throughout the world Christians gather to celebrate and proclaim an eternal victory.  In hymns and spiritual songs, in prayers and praises, in word and sacramental sign, we proclaim a great and joyful mystery summarized in three words: “Christ is Risen!”  In the words of an Eighth Century hymn:

Although Easter Day is a joyful celebration for Christians, it was not immediately so for those New Testament friends and followers of the Lord Jesus.  At first, they were shocked and saddened to discover that his body was missing from the tomb.  They were in all likelihood hoping to preserve the body as a sacred relic, and now even that had been taken away from them.  Later on, when our Lord joined his disciples following his resurrection, they were frightened and thought they were seeing a ghost.  Our Lord calms their fears by inviting them to touch him and see that he is not some sort of disembodied spirit.  He tells them, “A spirit doesn’t have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” It was difficult for those disciples to understand the mystery of our Lord’s resurrection because nothing like it had ever happened before.  It was as if eternity was intersecting with time and as if the future had come crashing in on the present.  You see, our Lord Jesus had not merely been resuscitated and returned to this life.  That is something they could have understood.  Neither was our Lord’s resurrection a matter of the eternal soul living on after the death of the body.  No, this was something else – something entirely new and difficult to grasp.  Our Lord’s resurrection was the reconciliation of flesh and spirit.  His body had been transformed.

The Bible makes it clear that what was true of our Lord’s resurrection shall also occur i us.  St. Paul writes in Romans Chapter 8, “If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who lives in you.”  In Paul’s letter to the Philippians he writes, “Our citizenship is in Heaven.  We eagerly await a savior from there, our Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.”  It is impossible for us to know what this transformation, this resurrection, will be like.  It is hard to imagine it.  St. John writes, “Dear friends, now we are the children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But, we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”

We shall be like him, writes St. John.  Christ is risen and we shall be like him.  That is all we need know.  This is our Easter faith.  As St. Paul writes, “Since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be alive.”  The Apostle writes, “The body that is sown (or buried) is perishable.  It is raised imperishable.  It is sown a natural body.  It is raised a spiritual body.  Just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.  Thanks be to God.  He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

At Passover, the Hebrew people celebrate deliverance from slavery and the inheritance of the Promise Land.  St. Paul writes, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.”  As Christians, we celebrate our liberation from the surly bonds of earth, the endless cycles of birth and death, to the new and eternal life of resurrection in our Promised Land, the Kingdom of Heaven.  Listen once again to the Apostle’s words: “Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, beloved, stand firm.  Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.”