It’s Easter!!!!  He’s Alive!!!!   Jesus has risen from the dead!!!  Our world has changed!!!!!  Our very LIVES are changed!!!!

Meh.  Ho hum.  Ya think?  Prolly not.  Really?  Is he?  How can we prove this to the world?  Better yet, what are you doing, how are you living, to prove that you believe it?  In what way does your life reflect this? 

It is so easy for us to celebrate the Easter  Season, with all the accompanying fanfare, the music, the bunnies and chicks and eggs and ham…..  We dress up in our best, go to church, and celebrate.  And then what happens the next Monday and all the days after that???  We talk about how nice Easter was and go back to business as usual.

If Christ is alive as we proclaim he is, if Christ rose again from the grave to save us from our sins, to change our lives, then should our lives not reflect a profound change?  One that is visible to all with whom we come into contact?

If Jesus Christ is the very God we claim, come in the flesh of humanity, if He is the Lord “through Whom all things were made,” as we recite in the Nicene Creed, it is up to us to proclaim this with all that we are, with all that we do.   Think about those whom Jesus had following Him: sailors, insurgents, tax-farmers, prostitutes, widows, lepers, and, on occasion wealthy folks. Rulers, workers, and the dregs of society. Young and old.  Their lives were changed in such a drastic measure that they died for their faith.   Many of them left all that they had, the security of their homes, their jobs, their families, to follow Jesus.  Would you? 

Nothing, NOTHING irritates me more than when folks proclaim from the rooftops, loudly, that they are “born again Christians,” who “live by the Bible”, and then live their lives working their hardest to be anything other than what Jesus commanded them to be, and following the parts of the Bible that are directly opposed to what Jesus taught. 

If you are one of those “Christians” who loudly and proudly proclaim that any group of people are less than, are undeserving, are not welcome;  if you are one of those who believe that any person should be other than who God created them to be, who are undeserving of medical treatment, who are not worthy of the same rights as anyone else, who should be treated as ‘other,’ then you are far, FAR from truly Christian.   Jesus kinda summed it up pretty nicely when he said, ““Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. (Matthew 23:27-28)

Jesus told us EXACTLY what to do, how to live, who we should be:  “As I have loved you, love one another.” He lived out the ultimate example of what this means. Then he said, “No greater love hath any man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Then He did just that. He also taught us, in Matthew 25:31-46 just exactly how we should live our lives:   “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne.  All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.  He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry .and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in,  I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?  When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you?  When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

If He really is risen, then we have an obligation one to another to serve our fellow man as He served us.  And we have an obligation to share this Good News with everyone. We have to make the blessings we have gained available to every human. EVERY.   SINGLE.  ONE.  And we have an obligation to show that there really is truth to the old song, “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love. And they’ll know we are Christians by our love.”   We have an obligation to reflect Christ’s goodness, His holiness, in our lives.  By our speech, by our actions, by our very thoughts. Especially for the least, the lost, the forgotten, those who are “other.”

As you have heard me say a couple of zillion times, YOU are the only Jesus some folks will ever see.  YOU are the only Bible some folks will ever read.

He is alive!  Let us allow Him to live anew through our lives, reflecting His love and His promise in all that we do, in all that we say, in all that we are.  He is alive!!!!!  Amen.