My question to you this week is: “Where is everyone?  Last week we celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.  There were over 100 people here to celebrate and worship with us.  It was great to see and experience, wasn’t it?  As many of you noted afterward, it’s too bad we don’t enjoy this experience each and every week.  I’m not going to discuss why it is that so many only come a couple times a year.  But it is worth noting that last week we celebrated the resurrection of Christ—I think everyone here knew that and expected that.  But this week is really no different—Christ is still risen.  Pastors may take time off after Easter, organists may take time off, people may take a Sunday or two off, but Jesus is still alive and well, still risen from the dead.  Here is how Peter describes it in his first letter: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!  In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade” (1Pet. 1:3-4).  We, like those Peter wrote to long ago, have a living hope because of Christ’s resurrection from the dead.    

Christ makes several appearances to His followers after His resurrection.  The reading from John this morning tells us of two appearances where Christ comes through locked doors to get to His disciples.  I spoke last week about how Christ is no match for the stone in front of the tomb or the closed doors the disciples are hiding behind out of fear.  Jesus comes to us no matter where we are.  He keeps appearing to His disciples, goes to great lengths to get to them.  The risen Christ is persistent, gregarious, ubiquitous, and determined.  He not only shows Himself to His frightened followers but works with them, gives them what they need in order to follow Him into the future.  Easter keeps happening; it’s not a one-time event.  Too many people view it this way—hence the reason why people come to church on Easter and we don’t see them again until Christmas.  Easter is one day and then as I said last week, everything goes back to normal for us.  Nothing is really different.  But the resurrection of Christ is not the end of the story—it’s the climax of the story to be sure—but it’s not the end of the story.  Christ is risen still—His resurrection matters for us all the time, not just once a year.

In fact, John later toward the end of his Gospel says that the risen Christ did so many things, performed so many wonders, said so much that there is no way that all the books in the world could fully report on all that He did.  Christ is on the move, busy, determined to get in touch with His followers who thought that in His death they had been left behind.  In other words, Easter continues.  The claim of Easter—that Jesus was raised from the dead—is so outrageous against our typical ways of thinking about things, is so beyond the reach of our powers of comprehension that many people just naturally want some proof of this claim.  They wish we knew the exact location of the empty tomb. They long for some historically verifiable shred of documentation whereby we could prove—historically and empirically—that the resurrection is true.  But you can't prove that Easter is true by going backward, only by going forward.  Because John says that's where the risen Christ is, on the move, ahead of us, not behind us.  You know what is for me the main proof of Easter?  It's you!  Believe is or not, you and I are the main proof of Easter and the resurrection of Christ.  Despite all of the setbacks and the perfectly good, understandable, rational reasons why you should not be here, more than 2000 years after the first Easter, here you are.  Jesus told us that where two or three are gathered, He would be there.  And there He is, among us, undeniably present.  As your pastor I've seen the risen Christ, not seen Him as He was, striding forth from the tomb, nail prints in His hands, but gloriously raised.  I have seen Him as He is, undeniably present in you.  You have shown me things happening in your life, I have seen and heard things in your life and my own life, you have testified to amazing twists and turns, inspiring new hope and uplifted faith that can only be explained by reference to the fact that Christ is risen, He is risen indeed.  The crowning evidence that Jesus was and is alive was not a vacant grave, but a Spirit-filled fellowship.  Not a rolled away stone, but a carried-away church.

Last Thursday we started our Bible study on the book of Acts.  Luke, the writer of the Gospel by the same name, is also the writer of Acts.  The book of Acts is a narrative history if you will about the birth and growth of the early church.  Luke begins the book by writing that in his former book (Luke) he wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day He was taken up to heaven.  Notice he says he writes in his Gospel about what Jesus began to do and teach.  At the end of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus has completed His ministry, completed what He came to earth to accomplish.  Or has He?  He has died and risen.  From the cross he cries out, “It is finished!”  But there is a sense in which Jesus is just getting started, He’s just getting warmed up if you will.  Jesus’ ministry is not over.  So in the book of Acts which chronicles the birth and growth of the church, Luke writes about what Jesus continued to do and teach after His resurrection and return to heaven.  Jesus has risen and returned to the Father in heaven but His work is not done.  Jesus is now working from home if you will.  He doesn’t have to go in to the office every day—He can and does work from home.  And He accomplished this work through the Acts of the apostles and the Holy Spirit.  That’s where the book of Acts gets its name—it is the acts of the apostles, the acts of the Holy Spirit—and by extension the acts of Jesus Himself.  Jesus’ ministry on earth, exercised personally and publicly, is followed by His ministry from heaven, exercised through His Holy Spirit and by His apostles. 

I wonder: do we believe that Jesus is still alive, still risen, still working in the world today and still working in our lives?  Do you think Jesus is still risen and working in your life, in your world, your family?  I think too many of us have the wrong view about how God works in the world.  In practice many Christians really assume that God’s work in the world and in people’s lives pretty much came to a halt sometime in the past.  I mentioned this the other night at Bible study as well.  Hear these words from Dennis Johnson, author of a book called the Message of Acts:

Our meager prayer lives, our anxiety, our dependence on novel techniques in evangelism, our hope in technology to solve spiritual problems, our doubt that loving discipline can restore wandering brothers or sisters to repentance and reconciliation—all these testify to our unspoken assumption that God’s real action is in the past and in the future, but not in the present.  We act as though Jesus wound up the church and then flung us out on our own when we say, “Our church can’t grow in this neighborhood,” or “I won’t apologize until she does—and she won’t!” or “He says he’s sorry, but he’ll do it again,” or “What will become of us?”  Could any of these attitudes survive if we were convinced that God is present and at work among us?  The presence of His power would dispel our discouragement.  His authority would melt our stubbornness.  His terrible purity would banish our temptation to compromise.  Surrounded by His peace, we would laugh at our fears.[i]     

This morning know that Jesus still works in this world.  He still works in your life.  He still is working in this church.  But He does most of His work through people like you and people like me.  We are His hands and feet.  Too often people don’t see evidence of Jesus in the world, no signs of the risen Christ, because His followers aren’t being Christ in the world.  We talk about it, but we don’t do it—I’m guilty of that and consequently we as a church have been guilty of that.  But remember, you didn’t hire me to play Jesus for you.  Some of you probably think that—it’s a common thing with churches—they think they are hiring a pastor to do the work of evangelism and discipleship for them and it is the pastor’s responsibility to grow the church.  I am not hired to be Jesus—I know there may be a lot of similarities (just kidding) but that is not the case.  I am called to be like Jesus to be sure, but you don’t pay me to do what we are all called by Jesus to do.  I am supposed to run the church with the help of the leadership and I am supposed to equip all of you to be the church—you are the church—you are Jesus’ disciples who are charged with carrying on His work and His teaching.  I get paid to do the work of a pastor, but don’t think my job is to run your spiritual life and grow the church by myself.  If and when this church grows it will be because people are convinced that Jesus is risen and working in their life and the life of this church.  It will be because they are on fire for God and love this place and want others to be a part of what we have going on here.           

Christ is still risen and always will be.  He is still working in the world and wants to work in your life and in this fellowship.  Easter is about the ability of Christ to defeat death in whatever form it faces us.  This is our true hope at the end of our lives: that the same resurrected Christ who keeps coming back to us, who keeps talking to us, who keeps making Easter out of death, will continue to work with us, will keep coming back to us, even in our death.  We shall discover on that day that our end is not defeat but rather communion with the one who has gone to such great lengths to be with us.  Even on the day of our death, Easter continues.  Christ is risen—still.  Christ is risen indeed!  Amen.