Alleluia! Christ is risen! Mark 16:1-8 Easter, April 20, 2003 The Rev. William V. Livingston, Rector Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi Alleluia! Christ is risen! The first year we lived in Abilene, our parish had an interim rector who gave that acclamation as his Easter sermon. By that, I mean after he made this opening acclamation and after the congregational response, he sat down. At first the congregation was quiet, or better yet stunned, then a chuckle gradually spread around the church that moved into spontaneous laughter and then applause. Having concluded a strenuous Lent, culminated with Holy Week, complete with pneumonia, I gave serious consideration to doing the same. While some of you may revel in a 30 second sermon, and while an interim and perhaps a long-tenured rector might be able to get applause with such an Easter sermon, I have decided to be not quite so bold. However, as I have reflected on this incident, I have concluded his sermon was simple but complete. It is the stuff of faith. Nothing else really needed to be said. For those of us who have accepted the call into the community of Easter people and have learned the appropriate responses, it is complete. However, for those of us who do not have such a background or who struggle wit uncertanties, how do we understand the excitement and the significance of this statement? Where outside the Christian faith, do we observe such spontaneous exuberance? After pondering this, I concluded that in our society that we are most familiar with such spontaneous exuberance in sports. Each sport seems to have its own unique method for its celebration. For instance, our younger son has played competitive tennis since he was 8. He quickly learned the tennis celebration response upon winning a key point or hitting a great shot. In basketball, it's the high 5, now being replaced by chest butting. In football, it's the butting of helmets. When our son was on a college tennis team, they were too sophisticated for such banal expression response, and doubles partners would reach out and barely touch fists. Each of these serve as an outward and visible sign of the corporateness of the team and an acknowledgment of something significant having occurred. Is this not what we do with our Easter acclamation? We acknowledge with others that we are in community with them and that something significant has happened. Then, I let my mind follow this sports analogy further. In almost all sports, coaches and athletes recommend training for peak performance. The assumption of this concept is that athletes cannot use one method of training year round and perform at their best. Nor can they train in such a way as to expect maximum performance at all times. Instead, the training needs to be varied with the goal to have specific times when the athlete performs at the maximum level. As I considered this method, I considered our liturgical year. Throughout the year, we focus on specific aspects of our corporate life within the church, with the focus being determined by the life and earthly ministry of Jesus. We have spent the last 40 days in Lent in which we have been invited to incorporate a spiritual discipline into our lives. In our own ways we have prepared for peak experiences in our lives as Christians: the celebration of Jesus overcoming death and fulfillment of his relationship with the Father and the act of baptism which serves as an outward and visible sign of the transformation of our lives and the incorporation into the community of Christians. Yet, a major difference exists between athletes preparing for peak performance and our preparation as Christians. For the athlete, the final action depends on the athlete. For Christians, our preparation expands our awareness and understanding and creates anticipation. But, it is not we but the Holy Spirit who transforms us as we celebrate Easter. Sara Grace in her baptism at last evening's Vigil and we in our baptisms have been called into deeper community that will not only have us establish traditional routines, but lead us into a new future not as bounded as our present. A lot of us like the women on the way to the tomb from the reading of Mark are pre-occupied with the hard task of living and afraid, but today, the Resurrection reminds us that God can repair what is broken, raise up what is cast down, renew what is old, make perfect what falls below the standards of God's values. Even if you are so afraid that you can't even speak of Resurrection, remember, that never the less it is a gift of love from God for you. Remember that the very fear that immobilizes you can be the beginning of wisdom; loving and being loved is a lot of trouble. God went to a lot of trouble to love us. We go to a lot of trouble to love God. The Resurrection is God's ultimate gift of love to humankind. When we enter it, we give up our illusions of being in control of our lives; we give up our duty to death. We give up living for ourselves. Today, we accept the assurance we join with Christians who have celebrated Easter for centuries. We have assurance that we join with Christians throughout the world today. With them we celebrate the corporateness of our called community, the Body of Christ, and affirm that Easter continues to celebrate something amazing: that the power of God's love did not stop with the empty tomb. Today, as does the Christian community throughout the world, in our community of the Church of the Resurrection, together we celebrate the significant event that the tomb was not the end, but the portal of the resurrection, thus, once again let us proclaim: Alleluia, Christ is risen!