Welcome Happy Morning!
The Easter Lessons and Carols service this Good Shepherd Sunday will be wonderful and moving. It will be a joy to see and hear all of our choristers and hear the story of Jesus’ resurrection and the accounts of his appearances to his disciples. I’ve always thought that the way we hear those stories on the Sundays in Easter is somewhat confusing, so I particularly enjoy hearing them presented in a logical sequence. It strikes me as moving and powerful and I know many of you will share that same experience.
The Evangelists would all have us believe that this moment ... the Easter moment ... is the central moment in all of human history. Here is God’s response to death: resurrection. It is the last word, a stunning reversal of things, it is emtirely unnatural. As Frederick Beuchner writes in Wishful Thinking, we do not go on living beyond the grave because that’s how we are made. Rather, we go to our graves as dead as a doornail and are lives are given back to us by God through resurrection, just as our lives were given to us by God in the first place.
Resurrection is for everyone who puts absolute truth in God’s action in Jesus. It is not an event that awaits us at our death, but the work of resurrection is already begun in us in our baptism. In baptism we are buried with Christ in his death. By baptism we share in his resurrection.
The biggest decision we have to make is whether we believe it or not. If we do, then what does it mean for the rest of our lives? What does it mean for each day of our life?
The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the cornerstone of Christianity, the foundation of all our hope. By his death he has destroyed death, and by his rising to life again he has won for us everlasting life.
No wonder Venatius Honorius Fortunatus could write 1400 years ago: “Welcome happy morning! Age to age shall say: Hell today is vanquished, heaven is won today!”
Welcome happy morning indeed!!
The Evangelists would all have us believe that this moment ... the Easter moment ... is the central moment in all of human history. Here is God’s response to death: resurrection. It is the last word, a stunning reversal of things, it is emtirely unnatural. As Frederick Beuchner writes in Wishful Thinking, we do not go on living beyond the grave because that’s how we are made. Rather, we go to our graves as dead as a doornail and are lives are given back to us by God through resurrection, just as our lives were given to us by God in the first place.Resurrection is for everyone who puts absolute truth in God’s action in Jesus. It is not an event that awaits us at our death, but the work of resurrection is already begun in us in our baptism. In baptism we are buried with Christ in his death. By baptism we share in his resurrection.
The biggest decision we have to make is whether we believe it or not. If we do, then what does it mean for the rest of our lives? What does it mean for each day of our life?
The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the cornerstone of Christianity, the foundation of all our hope. By his death he has destroyed death, and by his rising to life again he has won for us everlasting life.
No wonder Venatius Honorius Fortunatus could write 1400 years ago: “Welcome happy morning! Age to age shall say: Hell today is vanquished, heaven is won today!”
Welcome happy morning indeed!!
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