Christ Is Risen, Indeed!

Easter Sunday A

Christ is risen!

         Christ is risen indeed!

Please pray with me.

God bless the reading, the hearing, the singing and the preaching of your Word today. Amen.

Let’s start with an informal poll here. Which ones of us have beloved Easter traditions that we’ve either already done this year, or are looking forward to doing later today? Show of hands?

         How many spend time with family on Easter?

         How many dye eggs?

         Have Easter baskets?

         Eat jellybeans or chocolate or marshmallow Peeps?

         How many have the tradition of going to church on Easter?

I’m glad you’re here today and that you chose to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord with us this morning.

Here’s one of the Easter traditions that I remember most from my childhood. We would call up my dad’s parents on the phone, or they would call us, and we had to be the first ones to give the traditional Easter greeting.

         Christ is risen!

                  Christ is risen indeed!

The catch was, my grandfather is Russian Orthodox. So we had to remember to do this on Russian Easter. Orthodox Christians use a different calendar to calculate the date of Easter, and most of the time that date is not the same as our Easter.

Also, we had to know the right language for the greeting. Worship services are held in a different language in my grandfather’s church. It’s not actually Russian, it’s Church Slavonic – an old-fashioned Slavic language that only remains in use in some Eastern Orthodox churches.

Kinda like Latin in the Roman Catholic church – it’s stayed in use over the years in churches even though no one actually speaks it any more.

Anyway, back to the Easter traditions. On Russian Easter in my family, we would call Papi up, or he would call us, and whoever spoke first would say “Christos voskrese!” And the other person would have to respond “Voistinu voskrese!”

I remember, as a child, really wanting to be the person who spoke first, because I couldn’t remember both halves of the greeting and the first half seemed easier to me.

Fast-forward about 15 years.

As a young adult, I had the opportunity to spend an Easter at Taize. Taize is a Christian community in France, initially founded by some Catholic brothers, but it’s now an ecumenical community, and the brothers have special dispensation from the Pope to serve Communion to anyone who comes there.

A lot of simple chant music comes out of Taize. Taize attracts people – mostly young adults – from all over the world. They speak all kinds of different languages. So their music is written to be simple and repetitive, so that each worshipper can sing in their own language.

Or, if you’re singing in a foreign language, by the third or fourth time through a song, you figure out how to pronounce the strange words so that you can sing them prayerfully for a few more repetitions of the tune.

Taize attracts about 40,000 people for Easter every year. These people sleep in tents and sit on the carpeted floor of the worship space. You can fit a lot more people into a space when you don’t need to accommodate furniture for each body!

Those people come from so many different cultures and speak so many different languages, but on Easter Sunday they all worship together to celebrate the thing that unites them, the Resurrection of our Lord.

When I was at Taize, I had woken up early in the morning on Easter Sunday to watch the sun rise. I enjoyed some time in the quiet before thousands of others started stirring. And as I was walking back to join my group of traveling companions, I crossed paths with a stranger who was also out for an early morning walk.

He said something to me, and I couldn’t understand the words… but it was Easter. So I knew that the correct response, in any language, was, “Christ is risen indeed!”

That’s what the Easter message is all about.

Regardless of the language you speak, and regardless of when you actually celebrate the Resurrection, Jesus has risen from the dead! He has conquered sin, he has saved us from death, he has opened the way to life everlasting!

That’s what the empty tomb means on Easter.

It is a promise for all people. It is a promise that we can celebrate together, setting aside our other differences, knowing that Jesus rose from the dead that we might all have life.

Whether we celebrate Easter according to the Orthodox or the Western calendar… whether we can’t wait to get home to the huge family meal or we dread an afternoon of loneliness… whether we look forward to marshmallow Peeps in our Easter baskets or we’re disgusted at the very thought of sugar-covered fluffy sugar animals…

No matter what little traditions mark our celebration of Easter, the reason for the celebration remains the same.

Christ is risen!

Christ is risen indeed!

Christos voskrese!

Christ is risen indeed!

¡Cristo ha resucitado!

Christ is risen indeed!

Kristo Amefufukka!

Christ is risen indeed!

Alleluia. Amen.