Christ is risen! [Indeed he is risen!] Cristo è risorto! [È veramente risorto!] Christus ist auferstanden! [Er ist wahrhaftig auferstanden!]

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Many decades ago, in one of my former lifetimes, I was the senior canon at an Episcopal cathedral far away. A senior canon, he’s really the big shot at the cathedral. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross came to the city to put on a workshop on death and dying for mainly clergy-types: chaplains and that sort of thing. And I was much an admirer of Dr. Kubler-Ross’s books, particular the most best-known book, On Death and Dying, on the stages, and extremely useful from a pastoral perspective, for dealing with people who are dying and also with their families.

The workshop lasted three or four days, I suppose; well attended. Then on the last day, quite to my astonishment, she presented something completely different and something about which, as far as I knew, she had never written before. And this was evidence of an afterlife, a life after death. Now this was clinical evidence. It was as scientific as anything going. It was clinical evidence for life after death. I wasn’t surprised through any of that, having been in my youth an ardent reader of Plato, because all the evidence she was giving was right there in Plato. He talks about people coming back from out-of-body experiences and things of this sort.

Now, on that last day, our bishop attended, and he preached at the cathedral—my cathedral—on Easter. And he said, “I’ve always believed in the resurrection, but now there’s scientific proof for it.” I’m scratching my head, wondering, “He has no idea what he’s talking about! And to think, there’s a whole house of those guys, called the House of Bishops, who don’t even know the nature of the resurrection. You’ve confused it with an afterlife!” See, the resurrection is a scandalous idea! Josephus, Flavius Josephus, the Jewish historian, contemporary with the New Testament, when he describes the Pharisees in his book, The Antiquities of the Jews—very important reading; one must read that book, Antiquities of the Jews—when he describes the theology of the Pharisees, he describes their theory, their religious theory, as transmigration of souls. In other words, he made it something congenial to the Greeks of the time, who believed—some of them, at least—in the transmigration of souls. He couldn’t tell the Greeks and the Romans what the Pharisees really believed. The Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead! It was a belief very strong in Judaism from the time of the persecution of the Maccabees. The Jews of Jesus’ time, at least the Pharisees of Jesus’ time, believed that the dead would rise.

This Jew who had made his peace with the Greco-Roman world, he couldn’t actually say that, because it was embarrassing that somebody would believe in the resurrection of the dead. But notice how St. Paul, in his own trial, he says, “I stand here this day before you for the faith of Israel, the faith of the Jews. It’s been vindicated by the resurrection of Christ.” He’s talking about something physical. It’s a real body that arises.

When Paul tried to talk about that in his sermon to the Greek philosophers on Mars Hill, these are the ones who were very sympathetic to new ideas—they were very sympathetic to new ideas, quite academic in that respect: “Tell us something new that has never been thought about before”—so they’re listening to Paul, and Paul gives them a kind of Stoic presentation of the Gospel, kind of Stoic—he never repeats it, by the way; that’s very unique in Paul—he gives them a kind of Stoic presentation of the Gospel, and then at the last minute he slips in that God has raised somebody from the dead. He doesn’t name who it is, but God has raised some man from the dead. And what’s the response of the Greeks? Well! This is beyond the pale. We can’t even listen to this. This is outrageous. You’ve lost your mind, that the dead actually rise.

When Paul is on trial before the Roman authorities, he starts talking about the resurrection from the dead. Notice what the Roman procurator says: “Paul, you are mad. You are mad. You’ve lost your mind. Belief in the resurrection from the dead!?” Because if the dead rise, this messes up all of our statistics. If you go down to the Bureau of Vital Statistics, they’ve got the date of your birth, the date of your marriage, maybe other things, and then finally the date of your death. There’s no other column! It throws everything out of whack. But, you see, beloved, that is exactly the message of the resurrection: it throws everything out of whack. All bets are off! Everything is different, because the One who said, “This is my body and this is my blood,” if he rose from the dead, we’d better take that seriously. It’s not just a metaphor; it’s not just a signification—it’s real! “This is my body and this is my blood,” said by somebody who rose from the dead…

The Christian Church has always believed that and always regarded any other view of the matter as heresy and outside the pale, that the flesh and the blood that we take into ourselves into the holy Communion is the very body and blood of Christ, because in the holy Communion there is a sub-stantial change, a change of substance. Substantia means the underlying reality, the underlying reality: substantia, the underlying reality. It is no longer bread; it is transformed. It still has the physical traits of bread; of course it does, but it’s been united with the word of God so that it’s more than bread. The underlying reality of it is the risen body and blood of Christ.

Now this changes—if this is true—this changes the whole meaning of what it means to be redeemed. That means it’s not just a mental exercise. To be saved means to be received into our flesh the risen power of Christ. To take his body and blood into our flesh immortalizes us. It takes away the seeds of corruptibility. “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

The reason we bury our dead with hope is because those bodies have been nourished with the body and blood of Christ, and there’s some power in there that can never die and can never be killed. We are going to rise again on the last day because of what we’re doing here tonight, which is receiving the body and blood of the risen Christ, the word that we just heard about in the Gospel. To adhere to Christ is not just a mental thing; to adhere to Christ is a physical thing. We are changed by Christ’s coming into us. When we invite him into our heart, that is not just a metaphor. It’s taking him to the inside of us, and there’s a change of our own substance, the substantia, the underlying reality, because of the power of the Holy Spirit, which is why, a little later in the service, over the bread and over the wine, we’re going to invoke the power of the Holy Spirit, because only the Holy Spirit can do this. This is nothing magic, but only the Holy Spirit can do this. And the Holy Spirit is going to come upon the bread and the wine and transform the bread and the wine into the body and blood of Christ. We’re going to receive it into ourselves, and, receiving it into ourselves, we will carry around the force and the power of the resurrection.

Christ is risen! [Indeed he is risen!] Christ is risen! [Indeed he is risen!] Christ is risen! [Indeed he is risen!]