Easter 2025

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?” The angels question is poignant for us today. How often us modern Christians living 2000 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, treat him as a kind of historical object, someone who lived long ago, who does not have a bearing or demand over our lives. We think of Jesus in such a way that contains him into his own little niche of time in first century Palestine. We often unsuccessfully try to put Him back in the tomb, so we don’t have to deal with the repercussions of His gospel. How often do we treat Jesus’ resurrection as an idle tale, as the disciples first treated the announcement of the women, those apostles to the apostles, the first witnesses of the resurrection? Because of course, our ancient ancestors knew as much as we do, that the dead don’t rise. Certainly, if this Jesus they knew had risen, as the women said, that he was alive again as He had promised, then their life and therefore everybody else’s life will never be the same. Peter in this text astutely recognizes this possibility so he goes out to the tomb. I love the little detail: he stooped low and looked in, examining remnants of the empty tomb. And I imagine him piecing together everything that he had experienced alongside Jesus. Peter had a kind of evangelical eureka, where everything he did not understand before started to

make sense. Perhaps not in any human logical way. But only in the way that God in Jesus Christ made possible.

So why do we keep looking for the living among the dead? Like these first witnesses, we can no longer see things as we did. Dead are the limitations, the fears, the categories, and the hierarchies we once held. For Jesus has risen just as he promised. And his words and his commandments and his way of life have been given a vibrancy and power that 2000 years later continues to shake the foundations of our world. His living voice continues to speak, and build and uplift. And so when we hear the words of Jesus, let us not think of one as if he had nothing to say to you. He is speaking to your life, my life, and this community’s life. His word sustains billions of people around the world beyond this place. Jesus’ risen life, present in the universal church, is right now challenging confronting, revolutionizing, transforming peoples’ lives, in exactly the same way as those first witnesses.

So why do we continue to seek the living among the dead? We actually can see Jesus every day. We can speak to him, ponder with him, even feed him, entertain him in our home, we can cry with him, protest with him. I’ve seen Jesus right here in this church, offering himself in the bread and the wine. I hear the risen Jesus, in His Word, speaking to all the hidden stories of every person that comes to this sanctuary. I remember in a moment of pastoral care when I was saying a lot of stuff to this

person’s situation, and of the thousands of words I said, the only phrase that defined this moment were the very words of Jesus found in scripture, because His words are the living words of eternal life. I’ve seen Jesus serving and feeding the homeless in outdoor churches, I’ve seen Jesus asking for a little bit of money and bread because he says that He is in the needy. I’ve seen the risen Jesus present in the struggles of the poor all across Latin America, as they were empowered by Jesus’ life to stand up and reclaim their God-given dignity and liberation. I’ve seen the risen Jesus, in the total restoration of people’s lives in their despair, seeing the violent, the self-destructive, the downcast say I once was a sower of death, but Jesus has redeemed me and made all things new.

So why keep looking for the living among the dead? In this church, we don’t preach and receive Jesus, so that Jesus stays here confined to these walls. Jesus always goes out ahead of us, present in the margins of our society, present in the hidden places where we don’t want to go, but that He is asking us to follow Him, waiting for us to catch up and meet him there. Because this is the beauty of our faith: that it is a living thing, a creative force desiring to shed light upon the darkness, to establish truth in the midst of lies, and to set the captives free. We can see the risen Jesus present and in solidarity with those unjustly imprisoned in El Salvador, and there is also the risen Jesus already ahead of us, clamoring for the release of the innocent. I am affirming this to you because Jesus ain’t just an afterlife insurance policy, a lifeless object that

lives in some archive tucked away in your house. He is the living Lord, sending you fourth to live in love and mercy and justice. He is the one that says you are my beloved: do as I do, love each other as I have loved you. He is the one that will say peace be with you not as the world gives it, but the peace that surpasses all understanding, because He has overcome the world. He is the one that says I will make all things new and we are the living testimony of His life-giving spirit.

I will ask one final time, why do we seek the living among the dead? For He is out there waiting for you, calling you out, seeking to resurrect your conscience and your love. The gospel text says that Peter went away from the tomb, amazed at what had happened. And so in the same way, as the church, we are to be inspired and revolutionized by the empty tomb. To bask in the possibilities that this deed of God opens up to our lives. The resurrection of Jesus is the sign that God has destroyed the power of death, no longer are we subjected to the power of sin, but we are liberated by the name of the Lord of Peace, Jesus Christ. Because Christ has risen, we have been empowered to live a life of reconciliation, of forgiveness and restoration. We can now stake everything on the name of Christ: to love, have mercy and pursue justice freely, because He is victorious on the cross. Hatred, violence, tyranny do not have the final word. Their crosses produced the opposite effect. God in Jesus Christ has made a new world possible. From here, as the community of this Easter faith, we begin to live the reality of God’s Kingdom. Now, if the world, persists in going down

the path we are currently witnessing, now we need to make clear what kind of people the church is. We are the followers of the Resurrected Lord, one who bears the marks of our oppression, but by His resurrection, has made us new and clothed in the spirit of love and mercy, our nationality is God, and every human being is our brother and sister. The risen Lord is Lord of all, and therefore we are siblings to all. Do not expect to solve the current crisis with the old logic of violence and suspicion. Instead, be faithful to Lord Jesus, and love your neighbor, expand the horizons of your love, be the sign that when others’ see you, they actually might experience the amazement of the Resurrection, in turn resurrecting their own conscience towards love and mercy. The Love of God has the final word over the powers of death. Let us go out empowered in the name of Jesus to love the world into newness of life. Let us pray.