On Proclaiming the Resurrection

[Sermon delivered at St. Mary's Episcopal Church, the Second Sunday of Easter (Dominica in Albis), April 27, 2025]

✠Alleluia, Christ is risen! (The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!)

By now you are probably quite weary of hearing about St. Thomas, faith, doubt, belief, and the like the Sunday after Easter. We hear many sermons ranging from the necessity of having an unshakeable belief to the enemy being not doubt but certainty. So, I am not going to do us all a favour and avoid that topic. If you are disappointed in missing your annual St. Thomas fix, rest assured he has a feast day on December 21…don’t miss it…

What I do want to turn our attention comes from our two other lessons, which are supported by and arise from the events told in this same Gospel selection. The passages in particular that we shall focus on are:

Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you…Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.[1]

We must obey God rather than any human authority. The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.[2]

Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail. So it is to be. Amen. [3]

These three passages hinge on this singular premise, that Jesus died and rose again for our salvation and for the forgiveness of our sins and that we are sent to witness to this for the express purpose of reconciling as many to God as possible before the end.

I will admit, combined together these sayings rank right up there with every one of Jesus’ “hard sayings,” or statements that seem harsh and unyielding and even combative. Yet I believe we can honestly ask whether this really does qualify as a “hard saying.” Is it a harsh pronouncement of judgement, or is it an earnest plea for people to turn away from destruction?

I say to you, my brothers and sisters, that it is more the latter than the former, even though there is truth in both.

I will be candid, even blunt. Modern American Christians of the progressive stripe shy away from the thought of judgement. We are more comfortable with an image of a loving, even co-dependent God who does not care what we do, but draws us all to Him no matter how thoroughly wicked we are, even if we thoroughly hate Him and would rather die than spend eternity with Him, these Christians ignoring Scripture and Tradition to cover other ignorances of Scripture and Tradition. On the other hand, American Christians of a more reactionary stripe revel in the thought of judgement. They take pleasure in the thought of sinners writhing in the grip of a wrathful God whose blood-lust can only be appeased through the sacrifice of the perfect man. This God is more comfortable with mass condemnation of myriads of souls to the ever-burning fires of a demon-ridden Hell, grudgingly accepting into His presence those few who meet an exacting if deceptively simple checklist. Yet knowing how crippling and paralyzing the fear this view can be, they come up with failsafes to reassure themselves that they will be spared the universal immolation, whether it is a Calvinistic radical predestination, or a Dispensationalist-style eternal assurance, bending Scripture and Tradition to ease the issue of bending Scripture and Tradition in the first place.

What a mess. How do we unravel this?

First, I propose we look at the baseline or the factory-default setting. Scripture and Tradition teach us that Humanity and God have been in a state of war since earliest times. From the story of the Fall,[4] to the sorry state of affairs described in the Flood narrative, to every sad tale of rebellion and disobedience captured not only in the sacred Scriptures but in history, we can be assured that St. Paul was right in stating that all have sinned,[5] and that Our Lord was bluntly factual when He stated that no one is good, only God.[6]

Second, as a result of this enmity, we are separated from God. Let me be absolutely clear. This is not a result of caprice or whim, but an ontological necessity. Consider that God is not only the source but is Life, Light, Love, Goodness, Selflessness, virtues not only properties of God but the very fabric of His Being. Any action that denies life, light, love, goodness, selflessness, or any other divine virtue is a refusal to participate in said virtue, and a refusal to participate in said virtue is a refusal to participate in said virtue’s source and a refusal to participate in the One Who is said virtue.

Third, as a result of this separation from God, the result of that is what we call by various names, Death, Darkness, Hatred, Evil, Selfishness, and the like. The process whereby this is made evident or is exposed or made obvious is judgement, and the state is what we call wrath or condemnation. It is again not caprice or whim but simple truth-telling. Human and God come together, look at the truth, and agree that it is truth, and the consequences of that truth, that sundering of the ways, are not imposed but become evident. We have in the past called this separation Hell, but also Death, Sheol (the Pit), Hades, Tartarus, the Shadow World, or a host of other names depending on time and place.

Within this frankly depressing and hopeless state of affairs, God has provided a cause for optimism and hope. Even though this state is self-perpetuating,[7] God was not willing, no, not able to abandon His beloved creation because that too would be inconsistent with His being.[8] He thus embarked on a wonderful plan to heal the separation, to bridge the gap, to effect an everlasting peace between Human and Divine.

This is the message the Apostles relayed to us, that Jesus Whom we grieved, that Jesus Whom we tortured, scourged, and mocked, that Jesus Whom we crucified and left to be buried by those who loved Him, this same Jesus rose again from the dead to make us able to repent of our sad estate and achieve remission of our faults and reversal of our fates, that is, the forgiveness of our sins. God chose to become Incarnate by sending the Person of the Son, to be born of Blessed Mary Ever-Virgin and unite within the Person of Jesus Christ true Human and Divine Natures, to teach us about the Person of the Father, to suffer and die and rise again to destroy the hold of Death, and to win for us freedom from the chains of Sin and Death, and to give us power to become true and legitimate children of God.[9]

Yet God in His love will not force us against our wills. God will not force those that have decided they wish to have no part in Him to have fellowship with Him. Still, God will not let us pass by without offering us the way to reconcile with Him, to turn from our old, corrupt, and defiled natures and to put on a nature in harmony with His, participating in Life, Light, Love, Goodness, and Selflessness. This is what St. Peter told the Temple Authorities and the Sanhedrin then, and by extension all courts, congresses, and parliaments now, that in obedience and gratefulness to God the Apostles, and by extensions all we that have come to believe Our Lord’s message, must proclaim to all who will listen that this same Jesus has sealed the breach, healed the eternal injury, forgives all sin and reconciles God and Human for all who would accept and take this message to heart, making it a part of themselves and embracing this new nature won for us in the Passion, Crucifixion, and Resurrection of Jesus.

Jesus Himself commissions all of us to proclaim the forgiveness of sin, not just those who were with Him at that first appearance in the Upper Room, not just those who had doubted but later came to believe like St. Thomas, but us as well who have come to believe without having seen Him walk among us proclaiming the peace of God, trusting instead in the Person of the Holy Spirit who makes us the Body of Christ and feeds us with the Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy Sacrament.

Lastly, there will be those who will hear the Good News and yet will not accept it. They will not accept the peace between God and Human, preferring to stay in a state of war with Life, Light, Love, Goodness, and the selfless outpouring of the Living Waters of the Spirit. It is those who at the last will look upon Him when He returns and wail, not so much in fear but in realization of what they have rejected and the hopeless, empty course they have chosen and still choose to keep.

Let us not be faithless, but believing, trusting that Jesus has healed the enmity, that the Way which Jesus taught has eternal consequences for good, that the great outpouring of Love from Love Himself must flow into us and out into everyone around us. Let us not be shy in proclaiming that. Let not the current powers that would stifle mercy, and goodness, and love not have the upper hand, let us obey God and join St. Thomas and the other Apostles to proclaim the Good News of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Christ is Risen! (Indeed, He is Risen!)

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη! (Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη!)[10]

!المسيح قام! حقا قام [11]

Cristo ha resucitado! (En verdad ha resucitado!)[12]

✠Christ is risen from the Dead, trampling down Death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!

[1] Jn. 20.21-23

[2] Ac. 5.29-32

[3] Rev. 1.7

[4] Gen. 3 passim

[5] Rom. 3.23

[6] Mk. 10.18, Lk. 18.19

[7] Rom. 5.12

[8] Jn. 3.16-17, 1 Jn. 4.16

[9] Jn. 1.12-13

[10] Greek: Christos anesti! Alithos anesti!

[11] Arabic: El Messieh qam! (Haqqan qam!)

[12] Spanish