Easter Vigil sermon: He is not here
Apr. 20th, 2014 02:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chrishansenhomeAs Easter Vigils are usually long and conducted at night I keep my sermon relatively short. It is more difficult to write a short and to-the-point sermon than it is to bloviate for 20 minutes.
I recently bought an e-book titled Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. In it, the author follows the fate of dead human bodies, from those that are donated to science, to those used as crash test "dummies", to those that have died but provide donated organs so that others can live. I would not recommend reading this book during a meal, but I do recommend it for other reading times.
In many mystery novels, the method of murder is quite simple: a quick shot in the head, a knife to the heart, Colonel Mustard with a bludgeon in the library. The difficulty crops up when the miscreant has to dispose of the body.
So a question arises around the death we have commemorated on Friday—that of Jesus of Nazareth. Like Marley in A Christmas Carol, Jesus was definitely dead. So what has happened to his body?
Jesus foretold his own death and resurrection, we learn in the Gospels. At the tomb, though, we only know that there was a body just yesterday, and now there isn't one.
According to the book Stiff, there are many ways of disposing of a body without leaving much trace. But there wasn't time to do that in Jesus's case. When Cardinal John Henry Newman's grave was opened a few years ago in connection with his prospective canonisation, the only objects found were tassels from his cardinal's hat and a few brass buttons. The rest of his body was gone.
The Resurrection is not conjuring with bones, as Bishop David Jenkins once famously said. But what happened two millennia ago still has meaning for us today. We believe that Jesus was superior to death, and rose from the dead to a new life.
Should not the Resurrection, a victory over death, spur us on to live a life that is worthy of such a victory? We live until we die, and then rise to a new life: let us live as though we believe that what we are and what we do matters not only to us, but to other people and to God.
Therefore to the One who has risen from the dead, Jesus Christ, be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and praise both now and evermore. AMEN.
April 19, 2014 Easter Vigil
Sermon delivered at St. John the Evangelist, 7PM.
Epistle: Romans 6:3-11
Gospel: Matthew 28:1-10
In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN.
Sermon delivered at St. John the Evangelist, 7PM.
Epistle: Romans 6:3-11
Gospel: Matthew 28:1-10
In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN.
I recently bought an e-book titled Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. In it, the author follows the fate of dead human bodies, from those that are donated to science, to those used as crash test "dummies", to those that have died but provide donated organs so that others can live. I would not recommend reading this book during a meal, but I do recommend it for other reading times.
In many mystery novels, the method of murder is quite simple: a quick shot in the head, a knife to the heart, Colonel Mustard with a bludgeon in the library. The difficulty crops up when the miscreant has to dispose of the body.
So a question arises around the death we have commemorated on Friday—that of Jesus of Nazareth. Like Marley in A Christmas Carol, Jesus was definitely dead. So what has happened to his body?
Jesus foretold his own death and resurrection, we learn in the Gospels. At the tomb, though, we only know that there was a body just yesterday, and now there isn't one.
According to the book Stiff, there are many ways of disposing of a body without leaving much trace. But there wasn't time to do that in Jesus's case. When Cardinal John Henry Newman's grave was opened a few years ago in connection with his prospective canonisation, the only objects found were tassels from his cardinal's hat and a few brass buttons. The rest of his body was gone.
The Resurrection is not conjuring with bones, as Bishop David Jenkins once famously said. But what happened two millennia ago still has meaning for us today. We believe that Jesus was superior to death, and rose from the dead to a new life.
Should not the Resurrection, a victory over death, spur us on to live a life that is worthy of such a victory? We live until we die, and then rise to a new life: let us live as though we believe that what we are and what we do matters not only to us, but to other people and to God.
Therefore to the One who has risen from the dead, Jesus Christ, be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and praise both now and evermore. AMEN.
