My friend Mike sent me this joke yesterday.

Three guys just died and are at the pearly gates of heaven. The only problem was, though, that they St. Peter knew they weren’t exactly what you’d call “Model Christians”.  Mainly because he knew they only went to church on major holidays and the occasional wedding or funeral. 

So St. Peter decided that the only way he’d let them in to heaven was if they could answer one simple—but CENTRAL—question about the Christian faith.

St. Peter asks the first man, "WHAT IS EASTER?" The man replies, "Oh, that's easy, it's the holiday in November when everybody gets together, eats turkey, and is thankful..."

"WRONG," replies St. Peter, and proceeds to ask the second man the same question, "WHAT IS EASTER?"

The second man replies, "No, Easter is the holiday in December when we put up a tree, exchange presents, and celebrate the birth of Jesus."

St. Peter looks at the second man, shakes his head in disgust, looks at the third man and asks, "WHAT IS EASTER?"

The third man smiles and looks St. Pete in the eye.

"I know what Easter is. Easter is the Christian holiday that coincides with the Jewish celebration of Passover. Jesus and his disciples were eating at the last supper and he was later deceived and turned over to the Romans by one of his disciples. The Romans took him to be crucified and was stabbed in the side, made him wear a crown of thorns, and he was hung on a cross. He was buried in a nearby cave which was sealed off by a large stone. And every year the boulder is rolled away aside so that Jesus can come out, and if he sees his shadow there will be six more weeks of winter."

Well, that’s not exactly what Easter is.

We don’t exactly know where the word “Easter” comes from, but the Venerable Bede, a 7^th century monk in England, wrote that Easter comes from the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre, the goddess of the Spring.

And that makes sense.  Christians have always taken pagan festivals and Christianized them.  We celebrate Christmas on December 25 not because we believe that Jesus was actually born then, but it’s because of the symbolism.  Centuries ago, people started to notice that beginning with the fall equinox, the days became shorter and shorter while the darkness of the night began to overtake the light of day.  But that all changed on the winter solstice, which on the old Julian calendar, was December 25.  On that day, the light began to overtake the darkness, the light of the world, was stronger than the dark of night.

So it’s easy to see why December 25 was a great day for Christmas.  The light of the world had come in the flesh and darkness, evil, no longer had any power.

And so it is with Eostre, with the goddess of spring.  We don’t worship or even recognize a goddess of the Spring, but we can see why early Christians took what pagans were already doing and gave it a Christian twist.

The other day, Anne Hogan popped into Wimberly House as I was talking to Nancy Minyard and told us to go look at the dogwood trees blooming on 4^th Street.  Down the entire street, beautiful white and pink blooms of the dogwood.  It’s springtime.  Those blossoms and flowers that have been hiding all winter and braving the cold wind and frost in the mornings are now coming back to life.

You can hear birds chirping in the trees, it won’t be long before the hummingbirds are buzzing around looking for colored sugar water, and fireflies, or lightning bugs as we called them, will be flashing in the bushes.

We can see why spring is a great symbol for Easter.

Yesterday, we took Abby to Salter’s Hardware store to look at the rabbits, chicks and baby ducks.  Some of them were even pink, green, and blue!

Do you know why rabbits are symbols at Easter?  Because if you ever put two rabbits together, by the time you finish watching Matlock, you’ll have at least 34 little rabbits.  It’s all about new life!

The same is true with eggs, they represent new life, a new beginning, new creations.

So what is Easter, with all of the symbols of springtime, and reproduction, and birth?

How does anything of this have to do with you or me or with the Church, Jesus, Christianity, or anything else?

When God created the world and when God created humanity, everything was perfect.  The earth was perfect, man was perfect and woman was perfect (my, how things have changed!).

But when humanity rebelled against God, all of that perfection was distorted.  There was still the earth and humanity, man and woman, but things were different now.

Back in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had dominion over everything.  In a perfect world, they wouldn’t abuse the earth that God had given them nor the plants and animals that were there too, but after the rebellion, that natural dominion that we humans have was distorted. 

We have abused the earth and we abuse each other.  Sometimes…a lot of times, we abuse ourselves.  The dominion that Adam and Eve had over nature, over plants and animals, was distorted.  We human beings may be the most advanced, the most evolved creatures on this planet.  We can fly to the moon and we can clone sheep, but we still die when tiny, simple bacteria find their way into our bodies. 

Our bodies grow old, our bones become brittle, our eyesight fails, and our memory comes and goes.

And the fate of all us is that one day our bodies will give out.  It may be the bacteria, it may be an accident, or it may be that our hearts or lungs or brains just pucker out, at any rate, our bodies will stop working.  And we die.

This past week we lost a dear friend in Vera Umpleby.  She was a dignified, grace-filled daughter of England and she lived and died with poise and peace.  But after 80 plus years, her body gave out.

15 minutes after she passed, I was with her family offering prayers for Vera.  As we held her hand, it was obvious, it was obvious to me and it was obvious to her family that something had left from her.

She changed.  In 15 minutes she was different.  She looked different, she felt different.  That spark, that animation, that life-giving soul, had left her body.

But everything that God created was good, including our bodies.

There was an early heresy in the church that many still practice today that says the body is evil and wrong and only the spirit is good.  But God created our bodies and our spirits.  Therefore they were both created good.

And in God’s loving plan to redeem all of his creation, he redeems our bodies too.

That’s the good news of Christmas.  That’s the good news of the Incarnation, of God – the invisible creator of all that is seen and unseen took on human flesh, he indwelled in our bodies. 

And like a divine King Midas, everything Jesus touched was redeemed and made whole.  People that came to Jesus with leprosy and blindness, when they were touched by Jesus or when they touched Jesus, they were changed, there were different.

When Jesus touched the waters of the Jordan River, he changed it.  And now the waters of Baptism cleanse us in a way that ordinary soap and water never could, because he touched it.

The bread and wine that we offer at the Eucharist are not just concoctions of wheat and flour and grapes, they would be, if Jesus had not touched them.  But he lifted the bread and he lifted the cup, and now they are different – they’re changed.

The sufferings and the “stuff” that you and I have to deal with on a daily basis are not just sufferings and problems, but because Jesus suffered, because he was humiliated and beaten and betrayed, he changed all of that, he touched it.  And now when we endure it, we enter a realm that brings us peace beyond description.

And Jesus touched the grave.  He touched death.  And like everything else, when he touched it, he changed it.  No, he transformed it.

Gathering around Vera’s bed after she passed WOULD have been a different event if Jesus had not touched death.  Because there would be nothing else.  No hope, no expectation, no joy.

But the tomb of Jesus was empty because he changed death, he defeated death.  And the body that had been beaten, whipped, spit upon, and broken, was now transformed.  It was and it was not the same body.

It was not the same body in the sense that God just resuscitated a dead person.  The resurrection is not some divine CPR.  The body of Jesus was transformed, it was changed.  Mary Magdalene thought Jesus was a gardener, she didn’t recognize him.  Jesus appeared in and out of rooms after his resurrection.

But at the same time, those wounds were still there, as he showed them to Thomas.  But they were transformed.

And at the last day Vera’s and all of our bodies will be transformed just like Jesus.  The souls that leave our bodies when we die will join with our bodies, just they way God intended it in the first place.  Our bodies will be the same but they won’t be the same.  They will be recognizable, but they won’t be.  They will be new, not resuscitated bodies, not zombies, not the Night of the Living Dead, but new, transformed, resurrected bodies.

The resurrection is the completion of God’s redemption.  In Jesus, God had touched our birth and changed it.  He touched our living and changed it.  And finally he touched our death and transformed it into something completely new.

And that’s why we have Easter bunnies and Easter eggs, and other symbols of life, new life, and more life around us, because that is was the resurrection is all about – LIFE.

But that life doesn’t just begin when we die.

Do you remember the story of Peter during Holy Week?  Remember how Jesus told Peter that he would deny him not once, not twice, but three times?

And remember when Peter followed Jesus to the home of the high priest and how Peter backed away from his association with Jesus three times when he was asked?

Do you remember how the cock crowed?

Not many people realize this but Peter also died by crucifixion.  He died just like his Lord, except, he didn’t die just like Jesus.  He told his executioners to turn his cross upside down.  He said he was not worthy to die like his Lord did, and Peter was executed upside down.

The same man that was too afraid to even admit that he knew Jesus was now so bold, so confident, so peace-filled, that he didn’t shy away from death.

What happened between the cock crowing and his crucifixion?

Resurrection.

You see, Peter was transformed too.  All of his disciples were.  After the resurrection, they became new creations, they were different, they were transformed people because of their faith in the Resurrected Christ.

Power and prestige and money and influence cannot buy, steal, or acquire the peace that Peter had at his death.

Only faith.  Only free faith in the God that loved us so much, that even though we rebelled against his love, he came to us and touched all of our wounds and hurts and made them whole.  He touched the wounds of living and he touched the wounds of dying.  And in doing so he made everything new.

He resurrected it.

This is Easter and we are Easter people.

So let us rejoice in the springtime, let us have our Easter bunnies and Easter eggs and let us bask in life – new life – transformed life – RESURRECTED life

Amen.