Happy Easter!

I finished my Easter Day sermon with the first line from a well-known hymn. “Thine be the glory, risen, conquering Son, endless is the victory thou o'er death hast won.” The only problem was, no-one had heard it. I checked with my wife who knows the words to every hymn ever written and she shook her head. She didn’t know it either. I then realized that this universally known and loved hymn was only universally known and loved in England, not the USA.

As for the sermon, I recounted the days leading up to Easter and then spoke about how, post resurrection, everything seemed to be happening quickly. There was an urgency to spreading the word about Jesus rising from the dead. I said this:

“Jesus did not remain in the tomb. The resurrection to new life is not something that can be delayed or postponed for long. It is an irrepressible and divine event that is actually happening every day, every hour, in the lives of his faithful people. Jesus lives, and we are blessed to live in the light of his life, a life that changes lives, that heals and mends the broken hearts of so many. It is a urgent message that cannot wait, that must be told again and again. For this reason, the Christian life is dynamic, not static.”

In the days before Easter, the Artemis II spacecraft was on its way to the moon. Inside was another Christian, astronaut Victor Glover, who offered a simple yet eloquent Easter meditation.There is something about seeing the earth from space that brings out the philosopher in ordinary men and women. Perhaps we aren’t as ordinary as we think we are, and each one of us has the capacity for profound observation.

Speaking of astronauts, the Episcopal Church’s Prayers of the People mentions them. I remember the first time I read that and thinking, “how often will that apply?” Perhaps in 1979, when the Book of Common Prayer was published, they envisaged a future that would have us all as frequent fliers aboard interstellar spacecraft. 

I like to think that this Easter had a cosmic dimension. It is like a circle, where the end and beginning meet. That’s an image of the eternal God right there. St. Augustine speaks of God as “ever ancient, ever new.” At Easter we are the celebrating resurrection of Jesus Christ to new life and behind that, the God who spans all eternity and all space. 

Father David