Pastor's Easter Message*Usually on Easter Sunday, I make some kind of flip remark about how it is good to see everybody after a year. Also, I usually mention that I get a little nervous about preaching because it’s a bigger crowd, and because I am preaching to a lot of people that I haven’t seen in a while. Well, this year really has really put that into perspective for me; at this time most of us fall into that category because of what happened during this last year with the pandemic. So today I am going to leave the remarks aside and rather just offer my gratitude for seeing you all and having us all here together on this glorious feast of our Lord’s Resurrection – Easter Sunday.  Քրիստոս յարեաւ ի մեռելոց: Օրհնեալ է յարութիւնն Քրիստոսի:
Christ is risen from among the dead. Blessed is the resurrection of Christ! Many of you have said these words and repeated them at Eastertide throughout the years. Perhaps you learned this traditional Easter greeting, “Christ is risen from the dead,” when you were children and went to church with your families on Easter Sunday. Sometimes we think they are kind words, a nice way to greet somebody on Easter or simply a nice way to keep an ancient tradition. But did you know that when we say the words “Christ is risen from the dead,” we are really quoting scripture? You are actually reciting a passage from the Bible, from one of Saint Paul’s letters – his first letter to the Corinthians, in Chapter 15, verse 20, where he says, “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.” During this section of his letter, he talks at length about a certain trend he saw within the Corinthian Church. Some people were professing not to believe in the future universal resurrection of mankind, the teaching of which our church adheres to adamantly. Body and soul will be resurrected on the last day, the day of final judgment, when Jesus Christ will come again to establish his heavenly kingdom here on earth. There were many at the time who had varying beliefs. Some would say that this resurrection was only metaphorical, or that Jesus spoke of only a spiritual resurrection, not a physical one. Some were even saying that the resurrection had already taken place, or that the resurrection was really just that all the righteous at the time of their death are being raised up to heaven. Saint Paul vehemently refutes these erroneous teachings. He writes, “If it is preached that Christ is risen from the dead” – which was, and still is, the mainstay of the Christian preaching of the Gospel; without Christ’s resurrection, that means he is dead and gone forever! – “how can some among you say that ‘there is no resurrection of the dead?’” (I Corinthians 15:12) That’s the whole point of why we gather here Sunday after Sunday and especially on this Easter Sunday… it’s because Christ is NOT dead! He has been raised to life from among the dead and he lives today. As you and I are alive today, Jesus Christ is alive and he is seated at the right hand of his Father. Paul continues in verse 13, “But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised…” and still later on he says, “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ” – meaning those who have gone before us – “have perished.” This would mean they are gone forever; there would be no hope of resurrection for anybody. His argument is two-fold and almost a sort of Catch 22:
It gives me chills sometimes when we read this passage, which happens (if you may have noticed) at the graveside funeral service. Every time we go to commit somebody to their final resting place, these are the words of comfort that we share with each other. As we are literally planting the person like a seed in the ground with the hope and expectation that on the last day that person is going to sprout up as a new creation, a new being – just like Christ did. As we begin to pour the blessed dirt upon our buried loved ones in the ground, we pray that “the blessing of God descend upon the grave of the deceased, so that it would blossom with new life on the last day.” Saint Paul describes this phenomenon later on in the same chapter. He says, “What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable.” (I Corinthians 15: 42) And we saw that in Jesus. Over the past few days we’ve read the scriptures and sung the hymns and read the prayers about how Jesus broke his body, spilled his blood, died on the cross and was buried, in his human form physically withered and corruptible. But on the third day, today as we celebrate, he came out of the tomb victorious – incorruptible and triumphant over death. For this is what St. Paul means when he says, “Christ is indeed risen…” Not that only Jesus has arisen from among those who have died, but that he is the “first fruits of those that have fallen asleep.” (By the way, it would be a good place to mention here that when we say that “Christ is risen from the dead,” it doesn’t mean that he has risen from a state of being dead, or from the condition of death itself (even though both of those are true as well). What he means is that from among all those who have died – the “dead people” – Christ is now the one who has risen.) Picture again that image of the seed being planted into the ground and the plant sprouting up afterward. After patient waiting and expectation, the time comes for harvesting the fruit of those plants. Christ is the first fruit of that harvest. In the resurrection of all mankind, we all look forward to being harvested as fruit as well. In just a few moments, after my message is completed and we finish some prayers consecrating the holy body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ for you, the faithful, to receive, you are going to see me turn around and hold up that chalice with the bread and the wine in it. And I’m going to say to you, “Eat of this, all of you, because this life and this is the hope of resurrection.” This means that when the celebrant presents to you Jesus, in his very flesh and blood, that we do not merely see him as the only one who is resurrected. We see in his resurrected body all of ourselves, as we live with the hope of that very same resurrection unto eternal life on the final day. Dearly beloved, the Armenian people throughout the ages, through our expression of faith through our Holy Mother Armenian Apostolic Church, have lived with this hope for centuries and centuries. May we carry on that Sacred Tradition as members of our beautiful, holy Mother Church, understanding that Christ’ resurrection is the sign of hope for the resurrection of us all. When we live and abide with him, always coming before him to see him as those first fruits, to see him as the promised resurrection for all mankind – and especially for us believers, to await with great hope our entrance into the Kingdom. Let us rejoice, not only today on Easter Sunday, but throughout the entire year. Let us be as those who joyfully hope in his resurrection, secure in the knowledge that our Lord Jesus has come to invite us all to eternal life in him. Քրիստոս յարեաւ ի մեռելոց: Օրհնեալ է յարութիւնն Քրիստոսի: Christ is risen from among the dead. Blessed is the resurrection of Christ! Prayerfully, Fr. Stephan Baljian Holy Pascha 2021
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