Well, I have news for you, Easter is not just a day, it is a season, called the Great 50 Days, in which we celebrate the resurrection. So these Easter colours, decorations and banners will remain here until June 8th, when we will celebrate Pentecost Sunday. Why such a long Easter season? Didn’t we celebrate and rejoice with enough gusto on Easter Sunday? Wasn’t the good news of Easter proclaimed and heard clearly enough on that day? It might surprise you to learn that not only do we celebrate 50 days of the Season of Easter, but that since the early gatherings of Christians, Sunday worship is called a “little Easter” – that is each Sunday is a celebration of the resurrection. And by now, on this third Sunday of the Easter season, we have heard three resurrection stories. On Easter Sunday, we heard a resurrection story from Mark’s gospel. The women arrived at Jesus’ tomb, only to find the stone rolled away, the body gone, and a messenger who instructed them to tell the companions of Jesus that he had been raised. The women fled the tomb in terror and amazement.

Last week we heard a resurrection story from John’s gospel. The disciples are fearfully hiding behind locked doors. Jesus appears to them with a message of peace and forgiveness. Thomas, who was absent during this encounter, questions the resurrection stories of the others. Only when he too sees the wounded Jesus face to face does he believe. This week, the resurrection story is from Luke’s gospel. Jesus appears to the gathered disciples and their first reactions are terror and fear. Jesus speaks words of peace. He invites them to touch and see his wounded hands and feet, eats with them and then spends time helping them to understand the scriptures.

Perhaps by now you are seeing a pattern in these resurrections stories. The initial reaction to the good news of the resurrection is not one of joy and celebration – instead it is terror, fear and doubt. It is obvious that coming to affirm and celebrate the resurrection and to recognize the crucified and risen Christ among them, took some time for those first disciples. And for each one of us, it takes some time – in fact, I would suggest that it is the work of a lifetime. On a lovely spring day, when the beauty of creation surrounds us, when those we love are near, when we feel at peace within, it isn’t too hard to affirm the resurrection. It isn’t too difficult to proclaim that God’s love is stronger than the powers of hate, and that such love brings new life even in the face of death.

But what about the other times? What about the times when your world has fallen apart? - when you are wounded and in pain? when you have been let down or let go, betrayed by someone you trusted? What about those times of gut-wrenching grief? What about the days of disillusionment and despair when all you can see is the escalation of violence, when countless suffer and die needlessly because we spend more on weapons of war than we do on health, education, food and shelter for the world’s people. What about the times when you have failed miserably, when you feel worthless and useless? On days like that, living and celebrating the resurrection seems to be foolish and naïve. Like those first disciples, we are more inclined to close the doors and close our hearts, and to lock ourselves away in our pain or fear or despair. And yet according to the witness of the disciples, it was when they were least prepared, when faith was lost and hope was gone that Christ appeared to them. Somehow, in spite of the barriers of locked rooms and fearful hearts Christ was present to them.

The gospel writer takes great care to emphasize the way in which the disciples come to believe this new reality. There are no fantastic miracles, no amazing tricks, no special effects. Instead, Jesus appears to the disciples as ordinary flesh and bone – he shows the marks of crucifixion- his wounded hands, feet and side, he engages them in familiar activities, by sharing the peace, eating and talking with them. Now whether you understand these events literally, or whether you think of them as a metaphor or a parable, what is important is that Christ becomes real to them through touch, in words and expressions of peace, in eating, in talking and reflecting. And that is what we gather to celebrate in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We gather to meet the Christ who cannot and will not be shut out of our lives and our world. We gather trusting that even in our despair and pain and fear, Christ is with us. We gather to hear the good news that in the small and ordinary acts of living, Christ is among us cracking open a way for light, for healing, for hope and for new life to enter. We gather to be strengthened as the body of Christ so that we can put into practice the good news of the Easter.

And how do we practice the good news of Easter? We embody it, we put flesh and bones on it, so to speak. We make the good news of Easter part of our everyday reality. We live it every day. So you see, celebrating the resurrection isn’t just a few Easter dances and a couple of hallelujahs. Celebrating the resurrection is a lifelong commitment to join Christ in bringing life to a wounded world. It is a commitment that we make in our life together as Erin Mills United Church. It affects everything from the welcome we give to newcomers, the way we speak to each other, the care we give to those who are sick or in pain, the use of the building, our finances and the property, the partnerships we create with the larger community, the voices we take time to listen to, the way we deal with conflict, and the challenges that we are willing to undertake. That means that we cannot turn our backs on the people and places in our world where the wounds are deep and God’s power for abundant life seems the most unlikely. For that is where we will find Christ. In the bombed out neighbourhoods in Iraq, in the communities in Africa devastated by HIV/AIDS, in the hearts torn with grief, in the prison in Kingston, among the people affected by SARS, among those marginalized because of poverty or race or religion, even in those who seem to be most intent on rejecting life - that is where Christ is.