Church of the Nativity

Homily for Nativity and KDTH on Easter Sunday 4/12/2020

Happy Easter everyone!  I’m going to present my Easter Homily.  Just so you are prepared, I focus on the second option for the 2nd Reading, Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, 5:6-8, and then the Gospel reading, John 20:1-9. But I highly encourage you to read Peter’s Kerygma, Acts 10:34-43. Okay. Here we go!

Once again, on behalf of myself and my staff at The Church of the Nativity, I’d like to wish everyone listening today a very Happy Easter.  

It looks like it will be a strange rainy Easter Sunday, with a good chance for snow later tonight into tomorrow, but these last couple of weeks, it has been starting to feel like spring, like the normal Easter weather that we always hope for.

I haven’t seen it in the news or anything, but I have been wondering if people have been using their time in quarantine for spring cleaning?  Side note: the word quarantine actually means 40 days, ironic as we just finished our 40 days of Lent.

Anyways, have you been spring cleaning?  I have done a little bit myself, not much though as I just moved into my house back in July.  My goal for this semi-quarantine was to finish unpacking, I still have a half a room full of boxes that have barely moved since the day I moved in… But I guess in unpacking there is probably some cleaning to do too.

My thought is that many people would take this time inside their house to clean up their pantries, to go through their old food and throw out what was no longer good.

I bring this up because of our second reading in which Paul says, “Clear out the old yeast, so that you may become a fresh batch of dough...” Sounds like Paul is encouraging us to do some spring cleaning!

Paul goes on to say, “For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us celebrate the feast, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”

Paul is saying here that because Jesus Christ has been sacrificed for the forgiveness of our sins, we need to change our sinful ways, whether little sins or big sins, and live a new life that is leavened, or inspired by Jesus, in everything we do.

That’s the thing about yeast, a little bit affects the whole batch of bread, right? Are you aware of the big and small sins in your life? Just a little bit can affect everything. And in just the same way, a little bit of Jesus, just knowing how much He loves us and cares for us should affect our whole life!

I’d like to point out something interesting about our Gospel: three people went to the tomb and found it empty, and there were three different reactions… Mary ran away and questioned, Peter rushed in, and John, the beloved disciple went in slowly… three different reactions to the same scene, right?

But despite coming to it from different angles, they all came to understand the Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.  They hadn’t understood what Jesus meant when he talked about the Son of Man being raised or the temple being rebuilt until this point, but then they got it, separately.

And the point of that is this: God loves all of us personally. God loves all of us personally! By name! Which means He loves us all differently.  We are all unique, God created us to be the way we are, unique, and He loves us uniquely too.  His love is a personal love.

What I mean by that is He gives us what we need to feel His love in unique ways that are personal to only us, where only we can appreciate it.  God adapts His love to our particular sensibilities and needs.

In the same way that no two relationships on earth are exactly the same, no two relationships with God are exactly the same, and He provides us the personal love that our soul needs.

Easter is a unique time for each of us, we have spent these last 40 days, our spiritual quarantine, doing unique penances and trying to get rid of that old yeast, the sinfulness in our lives, and now we have to live it, live in this new love of Jesus.

I pray that our Risen Lord will bless you this Easter with the personal love you need to draw closer to Him and live a new life of loving sincerity and truth. Alleluia!

Thanks again for listening.  Hope your family has a blessed Easter.  

The Lord is Risen! He is Risen indeed!