Jesus is risen — So what?

Photo Credit: ScottProject Photography/Kamloops Tourism, Kamloops BC

A sermon for the congregation of St. Saviour, Penticton on the Second Sunday of Easter Sunday, April 12th, 2026 by the Very Rev. Ken Gray

I know it’s not the traditional, formal Easter greeting many of you prefer: “The Lord is risen / He is risen indeed; Hallelujah.” My sermon title today is “Jesus is risen; So what?” My greeting is more flippant than the traditional phrase; I think, however, it is very relevant and expressive of our Easter season experience. I could lessen the insult and say, “So what now?” Perhaps that’s better. That said, jazz music lover that I am, I still prefer “So What?” So why?

Well, “So What” is the first track on the 1959 album, Kind of Blue by American trumpeter Miles Davis. It is one of the best-known examples of modal jazz, set in the Dorian mode and consisting of 16 bars of D Dorian, followed by eight bars of E♭ Dorian and another eight of D Dorian. I bet you didn’t know that. And, you ask, what is the Dorian mode anyway? If you sit at a piano keyboard and play eight notes, starting on D rising to the next D, well that’s the Dorian mode; a scale with a flattened third and seventh.  If you have heard “So What,” well, you know it’s just, cool; very cool; so cool that in 2024, “So What” was ranked 492 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Now that’s cool.

Today’s morning air was indeed, cool, though warmth will come in the afternoon. Now into Easter season, we church folks walk with a spring in our step (pun intended).

Of Easter season, Canadian, Catholic author, Ron Rolheiser reminds us:

 “Christ is risen, though we might not see him! The miraculous doesn’t force itself on us. It’s there, there to be seen, but whether we see or not, and what precisely we do see, depends mainly upon what’s going on inside our own hearts.”

So what is happening in our hearts; in my heart; in yours? Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) staff member Mark Longhurst recounts the Easter story

“which revealed the good news of Jesus’s resurrection—and our own,” he writes. “Each year Easter is, for Christians, a celebration of the rising of Christ, but this rising is far more than one person’s death-defying divine act.” I once approached Easter this way; a heavenly Houdini stunt. No, no, no. The resurrection of Christ is expansive: Jesus the person rises and launches God’s resurrection movement that brings everyone and everything along with it.” That’s cool; very cool.

The late Episcopal Church educator, John Westerhoff, once described Easter Season as the honeymoon of the church. His point is simple: In Easter season, everything seems to work out, and to work out well, in the post-resurrection church. In Easter season, everything is possible; there are no restraints on love’s accomplishments. To all who believe, who welcome the gift of faith, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead will affect and infect the community of Jesus’ followers. Life is sweet in the community of Christ. (Notice that I did not say “the church.”)

I realize that much depends on the context in which we receive the good news. Easter in the Okanagan is one thing; Easter in Jerusalem, in the Middle East, is another experience altogether. In a recent email from the Sabeel Community, a group of Palestinian Christians in Jerusalem, I read:

“Easter, represents a significant paradigm shift from a time where the logic of empire and colonial violence dominated. To live out the Kingdom of God, as Christ showed us, is to live in opposition to the logics of empire. We must follow Christ’s model rooted in humility, in solidarity, and in love.”

All this, as missiles are launched, and bombs explode, and structures are destroyed, and people die — they call it “collateral damage” — even during cease-fires. The Sabeel message continues: amazingly, hopefully.

“This Easter, we must hold onto the Resurrection. Because perhaps, in our own despair, we have been looking for Christ in an empty tomb where [Jesus] is no longer found. Resurrection reminds us of hope, one that is not naive or passive but rather, one grounded and active in the values of the Kingdom of God. So, let us rise with Him, to find His presence in protest cries on the streets and among the rallying of the oppressed. Let us be the image of the divine, bringing the message of radical hope and love to a world in dire need of it.”

Oen final thought. Theologian and podcaster Kate Bowler frames Easter as a feast of joy that doesn’t erase the pain that has come before it: “There is an aspect of joy we often miss around Easter, and it appears precisely when Easter comes and goes, and life remains … unfinished. We wake up the next morning and discover that we are still carrying the same griefs, the same unanswered prayers, the same ache we carried throughout Lent. This can feel confusing. Shouldn’t we feel better? Was Easter not enough? But Easter joy is not the feeling that everything has been fixed. It is not happiness, resolution, or emotional closure. Easter joy is the ability to live in Christian anticipation and trust—patiently and imperfectly—even while we remain here in the long middle.”

Don’t you just love that phrase? — The long middle — Not done yet; life still unravelling; memory forgetting nothing, hanging in there, wherever “there” is, “patiently, and imperfectly.” Love it. In one way or another, we are all in the long middle.

So how ya doing in the long middle yourself? I do hope you are doing okay. I’m curious to know.

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