Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
I welcome you to join me and my husband, Nicholas Pye, celebrating the joy of Easter through a reading from John’s gospel. It details what happened that first Sunday when Jesus rose from the dead. Filmed on location at the Garden Tomb, Jerusalem, January 2023.
You might also enjoy reading about the life-changing story of Charles Simeon one Easter morning in today’s Our Daily Bread.
Enjoy this Resurrection Sunday!
Happy Easter!
We’ve entered the season of the church year of celebration and feasting – forty days of remembering with joy that Christ is risen and is among us. If we’ve observed Lent, the forty days of fasting before Easter, then we surely should mark this time of feasting afterwards.
Augustine of Hippo, the eminent theologian, spoke in a sermon about this time of celebration – a time of saying “alleluia.” (Especially as during Lent, we don’t say this word; in fact, some people symbolically bury the word during Lent and then dramatically bring it out on Easter morning.) Here’s the quotation from sermon 255:
Since it was the Lord’s will that I visit your graces in alleluia time, I owe you a word or two on alleluia. I trust I won’t bore you if I remind you of what you already know; because, after all, we not only say this alleluia every day, we also take pleasure in it every day. You know, of course, that alleluia means, in English, “Praise God”; and by singing this word together, our voices in harmony and our hearts in agreement, we are urging each other on to praise God. The only people who can praise him without a qualm are those who have nothing about him that might displease him.
And indeed, during this time of our exile and our wandering, we say alleluia to cheer us on our way. At present alleluia is for us a traveler’s song; but by a toilsome road we are wending our way to home and rest where, all our busy activities over and done with, the only thing that will remain will be alleluia.
Alleluia, he is risen! He is risen indeed! Death’s curse has been broken by our Savior’s death and resurrection. He’s alive! Rejoice with me and be glad!
Stunned shock turns into joy when Mary wonders first where Jesus’ body is, and then when he speaks her name, she knows immediately it’s him. I love that – the instant recognition of the one who loves you most who speaks your name. And note Peter in true form, dashing ahead of John to burst into the tomb.
I pray that this day, you, like Mary, can say, “I have seen the Lord!”
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
After forty days of no alleluias, we bring out the word in style today, speaking it with joy and gratitude. As I say in my book, Finding Myself in Britain:
We build up to Easter with a forty-day season of reflection, and yet we seem not to celebrate more than a day. Just like the twelve days of Christmas are lost on our culture. Tom Wright, the prolific and engaging theologian, rues this oversight. He says that Easter ought to be a long festival:
“with champagne served after morning prayer or even before, with lots of Alleluias and extra hymns and spectacular anthems. Is it any wonder people find it hard to believe in the resurrection of Jesus if we don’t throw our hats in the air? Is it any wonder we find it hard to live the resurrection if we don’t do it exuberantly in our liturgies? Is it any wonder the world doesn’t take much notice if Easter is celebrated as simply the one-day happy ending tacked on to forty days of fasting and gloom? It’s long overdue that we took a hard look at how we keep Easter in church, at home, in our personal lives, right through the system. And if it means rethinking some cherished habits, well maybe it’s time to wake up.” (Tom Wright, Surprised by Hope [London: SPCK, 2007], 268.)
I agree with him; as Christians we should be known for the joy that marks our faces and our characters as we exude hope and grace. As I’ve learned on my journey to finding myself in Britain, in this life we will face disappointment, disease, and hardship, but as God’s beloved, his promises and gifts should change our disposition. He helps us to forgive; he gives us hope and strength; he showers us with grace. As St Augustine of Hippo reminds us: “We are an Easter people and our song is ‘Alleluia!’” (“Being Easter People,” Finding Myself in Britain, 144–45)
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!