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Easter Sunday
A brief sermon/reflection for Easter Sunday – Year A – 2020

The readings for today are the following: 

  • Acts 10.34-43
  • Psalm 118. 1-2, 14-24
  • Colossians 3. 1-4
  • John 20. 1-18

You might like to visit https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/ and enter any of the above readings and selecting the NRSV anglicized version or any other version.

Prayer 

Loving Heavenly Father, we thank you for the words you have spoken to us today. We know that your words are words of life and words of salvation. Open our hearts Father, touch our souls, forgive us our sins, our lack of faith, help us to open our hearts and respond to your word. Help us to surrender our lives to you trusting your Son whom you have given to us showing us how much we are loved by you. Amen. Amen. 

Why is Christianity good for our health?

Because we proclaim the good news that we are loved and forgiven by God no matter how messed up we are or what we have done. We truly experience health and wholeness when we feel accepted, loved and forgiven! Love is like a healing balm that keeps the trillions of cells in our human body aglow and alive! When we accept God’s love into our hearts, our general health improves as we are spiritually stronger to live life as it was meant to be. After all, as the Bible says, we were made in God’s image (Genesis 1.27) and God is Love (1 John 4.16)!

The cross and the Paschal candle

The Paschal Candle is lit on Easter Day; we light it also every Sunday of the year to remind us that Jesus rose from the dead, that he is indeed the true light of the world, the true light that sheds light in the darkness of doubt, despair and death and illumines our hearts with hope and joy of eternal life.

The cross reminds us of suffering, sacrifice, death just as the candle reminds us of life, light, love. The empty cross reminds us that Jesus died but rose again from the dead. Every time we look at the cross or we make the sign of the cross, we remember the Father who created us, the Son who became one of us and died to give us new life and the Holy Spirit given to us at Pentecost.

The simple sign of the cross encompasses the whole history and mystery of our Christian faith, our salvation: Father (Creation), Jesus (Incarnation), Holy Spirit (Pentecost). Amen (Parousia – He will come again!)

We are loved and forgiven by God!

What we celebrate today on Easter Day is the complete and absolute victory of love, victory of God. We remember that, “Greater love has no one than this that he lays down his life for his friends.” (John 15.13) We rejoice that love always triumphs over death and evil. We celebrate that “God loved the world so much that he gave his only son so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3.16)

Victor Hugo, in one of his books, says: “The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.”

All that we have done as a Church in the period of Lent leading up to the Holy Week is simply remembering and celebrating this one singular and beautiful fact that we are loved by God so much so that he has given us his own son to us as the saviour and healer of our lives. In short, we celebrate today God’s singular, unconditional and forgiving love of us.

So what does the “resurrection actually mean to me?”
  • It means that love has conquered death.
  • It means that our life is not short, it is eternal;
  • we have not death before us but eternity;
  • we were born not to die but to live eternally,
  • we don’t grieve; life does not pass, only time passes; eternity has no end.
To conclude

If Jesus “went about doing good” while he was alive, as we heard in the first reading, now after he rose from the dead he is able to be in the whole world, in every person, in every place and in every event. He is, as Paul writes to the Colossians in 3.11, “all and in all”. He is everywhere, in everyone and all the time!

Again, what does it all really mean for us today? What does it all come down to finally? The writer Saint Exupery in his book “The Little Prince” says: “We only see with the eyes of love.” Love is the only creative, redemptive force in the world.

The real point is – Have you in ever your life met and experienced this God of Love who shed his blood and died for us on the cross and who rose again for us? Have you somehow, somewhere, encountered him? Do you truly believe that Jesus Christ is your Saviour? Do you love him? Have you experienced his forgiving love?

Have you, above all, accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and given your life into his hands? When you do that you will experience resurrection in your life as well!

Prayer

Let us pray:

I now give you a chance to do something you might have avoided doing in the past. I invite you truly to place your life into God’s hands in obedience and submission to Jesus Christ. I invite you to pray the following prayer in the silence of your heart :

Lord Jesus, I believe you are the Son of God. Thank you for coming to us at Christmas. Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins. Thank you for rising from the dead to give me hope. Please forgive my sins and give me the gift of eternal life.  I ask you into heart and my life to be my Lord and Saviour. I want to serve you always. Amen.

[ST Mattapally]