In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
We all came to church this morning and hopefully, were greeted with the words: Krisdos Haryav ee Merelotz! Christ is Risen from the dead! It’s an unusual thing we proclaim on this day.
There are many people in this world wo don’t believe that, but on Easter Sunday Christians gather by the millions and billions around the world and we proclaim this totally improbable thing—that Christ has Risen from the Dead and that evil and death do not have the last word. God does.
This is the Good News of Easter Sunday. It is the hope that lives at the center of our lives. Let’s be honest. Resurrection is a hard thing for us to wrap our minds around. It goes against what we know to expect in this world. Clearly, what Jesus did and said back in the 1st Century upset some very powerful people and they caught up with him and had Him killed.
We know that not all stories have happy endings. That is just the way life is. On Good Friday, that is what the disciples thought. They loved Jesus. They followed Him. They dedicated their lives to Him but they watched Him die. They were crushed with grief because from what they understood, death always has the final word.
No one was more surprised than they were when they saw the empty tomb. At first, they didn’t believe it and they were terrified but it was true. For the earliest Christians, the Resurrection was not a made-up story. It was a fact and the greatest Story ever told.
Sometime ago, as I was listening to a pod cast while driving home, I heard the host refer to Christians as “Easter people living in a Good Friday world.” That phrase stuck with me. “Easter people living in a Good Friday world.” What does that mean? To me, it means we live in a world that is often difficult and challenging, a world where there is a great deal of death and damage. Just watch thirty seconds of news on any given day and you will understand.
Despite the tragedies and difficulties, we believe that God has not given up on the world. We believe that even death itself doesn’t have the final word. The Risen Christ has the Final Word. Being “Easter People” means holding on to the hope that the Resurrection declares that God has not given up on the world because this world matters. This world full of illness and danger, troubles and struggles matters to God.
The Resurrection announces that what we do with our lives matters. Every act of compassion matters. Every work that produces good and truth matters. Every honest act of business, every kind word matters because they all contribute to God’s work of restoring this “Good Friday World” to the world it was intended to be and created to be.
For those who believe in the Hope of Easter, the Miracle of this day lives on through each of us. Remember, when we forgive our enemy, when we feed the hungry, when we defend the weak, we proclaim the Hope of the Resurrection. When we work to repair broken relationships, when we sacrifice for the sake of others, when we take time to support a friend, we proclaim the Hope of the Resurrection. When we stand up for the truth, when we refuse to compromise our integrity, when we love the unlovable, we proclaim the Hope of the Resurrection.
This is how “Easter People” live in a “Good Friday World.” We live our lives by sharing the Hope of Easter in a world where for many, hope can be difficult to find. This Hope has been written into the hymns of our church for 1700 years. This Hope was carried in the heart of our ancestors as they marched through the darkness of 1915 and were removed from our Land of Artsakh in 2023. This Hope was what our immigrant relatives brought with them when they landed in America to pick up the pieces of their lives and start again. This Hope has been whispered into the ears of our children by faithful parents and grandparents since word of the “Empty Tomb” reached our homeland in the first half of the 1st Century. With this Hope, they began writing the next chapters of our story with these four powerful words: The Tomb was empty!
So, on this Easter Sunday, I say to you all: Kristos Haryav ee Merelotz! Christ is Risen from the dead and the Tomb is empty! Happy Easter to you all! God is Great!
Amen.