Alleluia! Christ is Risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Welcome to all of you on this glorious Easter Sunday morning 2007! Welcome to all of you as we remember that the tomb was found empty, Christ has been raised from the dead, and God has gloriously overturned the pattern of human life forever.

If I could give you one thing this morning, it would be the gift of complete certainty. I would give you the gift of complete certainty that you have nothing to fear – ever – because the Risen Christ is abroad and at work in the world, and present within each of us. I would give that certainty to you as a gift because I think many of us still live – in this post-Easter world - with dread and fear and mistrust and uncertainty.

We read history and wonder how human beings could possibly have made so many horrible mistakes. We reflect on the number of wars in these centuries since Christ and are appalled – or should be - that the peace that Christ came to bring to humanity still eludes us. We reflect with horror how many conflicts and wars have had (and still have) a religious basis, when Christ offered us the freedom to choose his Way rather than to impose it.

We watch television, listen to the news, read the papers, and explore the Internet and are dismayed how violent human beings still are when we claim Christ as the Prince of Peace. We may believe in theory when Christ called us love our neighbor as ourselves and to turn the other cheek, but we still act out of the ancient “eye for an eye” model of retribution. And that, as you know, takes place not just on the global stage, but in our churches and homes and families and in the midst of what are supposed to be loving relationships everywhere.

And if the violence and suffering in this world doesn’t give us cause for dismay, then perhaps the political process in America will. I heard the other day of the amount of money that had already been pledged in support of the 2008 presidential elections. It’s just an obscene amount of money. Isn’t there a better way to get candidates’ messages across? Couldn’t such enormous sums of money be better used to help veterans and their families, hungry children, and older adults who can’t afford to pay for prescriptions? I’m sure you have your own set of grievances about the ways things are in the world versus the way we want them to be.

How do we square what’s wrong with the world with the incredibly good news of the presence of the Risen Christ in the world? How can you and I possibly believe such good news on the one hand and find a world filled with such bad news, such sad news? Are we left to believe that we are helpless, and that the good news is only that at our death we’ll go straight to heaven?

The resurrection reality is that Christ gives us the power to make the kinds of choices that would bring the world God desires into being. It really is up to us, with God’s help, and always has been. It really is up to us to claim Christ risen and BE the Body of Christ in the world – not as a vocation we remember on Sundays only – but as the ONE thing that drives everything we are, everything we do, and everything we believe in.

In a prayer poem, David Adam writes:

In light defeating darkness

In wisdom conquering foolishness,

In trust overcoming fearfulness,

Jesus Lives.

In strength coming to weakness,

In health rescuing from sickness,

In hope saving from despair,

Jesus Lives.

In love victorious over hatred,

In forgiveness dispelling anger,

In glory dispersing drabness,

Jesus Lives.

In joy growing from sorrow,

In life rising from death,

In God giving the victory,

Jesus Lives.

He holds the keys of love

of peace.

He holds the keys of life

of death.

He holds the keys of heaven

of earth.

He holds the keys of now

of eternity.

Let us begin anew today – on this Easter Sunday in the year 2007 – by telling the story of our lives and the world from the bottom up rather than the top down. Let’s start shouting the good news of every relationship we know of that has been restored by forgiveness. Let’s start telling others the stories of every instance in which we’ve seen wisdom overcoming foolishness and trust overcoming fearfulness.

Let’s get out there and name the situations we know in which health and healing overcame sickness and sadness; where hope overcame depression and where love neutralized hatred. Let’s witness to the power of the resurrection in our lives, in our church, in the time God has given us, which is right now. Perhaps what makes the world seem helpless and hopeless is that we aren’t telling our own Resurrection stories – our stories of new life and new beginnings.

The world God still calls into being – what Jesus called the Kingdom of God – is not a world that God will impose upon us. It’s a world that we create with God from the bottom up rather than from the top down. We see that so supremely in the ministry of Jesus. He shared his vision of a peaceful and loving world with one person at a time. He didn’t need a crown to share his vision; he didn’t need an army, and he didn’t need a political system or a religious system to share his message.

He shared it one person at a time, he converted one person at a time to a new way of seeing things and a new way of living life, and he does that still to this day with us. And we, in turn, are invited to go and do the same. It’s not simply believing in Christ Jesus as our Lord and Savior that will save the world and usher in the Kingdom of God; it’s our willingness to carry on the work of Christ by claiming the gift God offers to us, which is Christ-likeness.

Our own Christ-likeness is made known through wisdom, trust, strength, help, hope, love, and forgiveness. These are the attributes, the virtues, that mark the character of Christ, and they are ours now to claim. This is the way in which God will bring light, glory, joy, and new life to this world. This is the pattern of the redemption of the world. The Risen Jesus offers you the invitation to claim new life in him, but you must be willing to die first. You and I must die to our dread and fear and mistrust and uncertainty. Only then can we be re-born in Christ-likeness; only then can we live as Christ’s people, as Easter people, as the people of the Resurrection.

Even the Shell gas station at the corner of Muir’s Chapel Road and Market Street is ready to pass on the message. The sign I saw at the gas station this morning read, “A different world cannot be built by indifferent people.” Claim the power of Christ working in you and through you this day. God will build a different world through you and through me.

Amen.