Based on Colossians 3 and Matthew 28

John Irving, writing about his novel “A Prayer for Owen Meany,” has this to say about his title character:
As a full-grown adult, Owen Meany will stand only five feet tall and weigh only one-hundred pounds –
the minimum acceptable size for the U.S. Army,
As a child,  he’s so small that the other children in his Sunday-school class can pick him up and pass him back and forth in the air – over their heads,
while they remain seated in their chairs.
They do this because they love to hear him complain.
Owen has something wrong with his voice:
his voice doesn’t grow either.
He speaks in a permanent, cracked falsetto,
a kind of strained squeak.
And although Owen takes himself very seriously,
it is extremely hard for anyone else to –
because he is so small and his voice is so absurd.

But Owen is a very serious character.
Owen believes that he is a chosen one;
that his life is following a Divine Plan,
a narrative authored by God.
To Owen Meany everything that happens to him happens for a reason –
he believes that he is small for a reason,
and that his voice never changes for a reason.
So says John Irving.

Now if you want to know what that divine plan is,
you will have to read the book,
I’m not going to give it away.
But I do want to say that Owen Meany has a profound impact upon his best friend, John Wheelwright.
We see this in the opening paragraph of the book when John writes:
“I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice –
not because of his voice,
or because he was the smallest person I ever knew,
or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death
[again, you have to read the book to understand this]
but because he is the reason I believe in God;
I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.
I make no claims to have a life in Christ,
or with Christ –
and certainly not for Christ,
which I’ve heard some zealots claim.
I’m not very sophisticated in my knowledge of the Old Testament,
and I’ve not read the New Testament since my Sunday school days,
except for the passages that I hear read aloud to me when I go to church.
I make no claims to be especially pious;
I have a church-rummage faith –
the kind that needs patching up every weekend.
[But] what faith I have I owe to Owen Meany.,
A boy I grew up with.
It was Owen who made me a believer.

Now file those words away in the back of your mind for a few minutes.
Filed away?  Good.

Later in the book John is having a conversation with Owen about religion,
or rather John is listening to Owen pontificate on the Christian faith,
and it is this conversation which brings us to the theme of this day.
Owen in his cracked and squeaky voice tells John:
I find that Holy Week is draining;
no matter how many times I have lived through his crucifixion,
my anxiety about his resurrection is undiminished –
I am terrified that, this year, it won’t happen;
that, that year, it didn’t.
Anyone can be sentimental about the Nativity;
any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas.
But Easter is the main event;
if you don’t believe in the resurrection,
you’re not a believer.

Let me repeat that last part:
Easter is the main event;
if you don’t believe in the resurrection,
you’re not a believer.

Now that statement raises a question for me,
and if you will allow me to be blunt,
I will ask it.
All those for bluntness, raise your hands.
My question is this:
Do we believe in the resurrection?
Do we really believe in it?
Do we stake our lives on that belief?
Or even more close to home,
do we live our lives as though the resurrection is a reality and not just some warm and fuzzy ending tacked on to a sad and tragic story to make us feel better,
like some big Hollywood movie production.
All the big hits from Hollywood have to have happy endings,
so is this story of Easter just more of the same?
Or did it really happen?
Do we believe it happened?

I ask this because there are times, many times in fact,
when I find it hard to believe that we really believe.
Most of the time, in fact, it is hard to tell that we are an Easter people,
that we are a people of the resurrection.
Study after study has shown that when it comes to moral behavior Christians are almost always no better than non-Christians.
Christians cheat on their taxes at the same rate as non-Christians,
Christians get divorced just as much as non-Christians.
In almost every area of ethics and morality,
Christians are about the same as those who have never become disciples of Christ.
Is this the way it should be?
Shouldn’t our lives look different if we really believe?

Paul, in our reading from Colossians, seems to think so.
You remember what we read a few moments ago,
a passage that is often read at baptism services:
“For you have died,
and now you have been raised with Christ.
Set your mind on the things that are above.”

One preacher writing about his own coming to faith and baptism had this to say about Paul’s words:
I walked home [after my baptism] with my wet clothes wrapped in a wet towel under my arm,
and I tried to think about what [the words the preacher spoke] meant.
After you have been raised from the dead,
you do not look the same,
sound the same,
talk the same,
or behave the same.

But what do you do?
Should I dress a little better than I’ve been dressing?
It wouldn’t hurt.
How do you talk?
What do you sound like?
I went to school on Monday morning wondering,
“Is anybody going to know that I’ve been raised?
Do I talk another way?
Do I throw in a verse or two of scripture now and then?
What do I do at ball practice?
Are they going to say. “Well, it looks like he’s been raised from the dead”
How do you walk?
How do you relate?

How does it show that we have been raised with Christ,
that we believe,
not only in his resurrection,
but even in our own?
When you go to work,
when you go to school,
when you hang around with your friends,
how does it show?

Just beyond the verses we read in Colossians,
Paul gives his answer to the question.
He writes:
Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly:
sexual impurity, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry).
These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life.
But now you must get rid of all such things-
anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth.
Do not lie to one another,
seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self,
which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.
And in that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew,
circumcised and uncircumcised,
barbarian, Scythian, slave and free;
but Christ is all and in all!

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved,
clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.
Bear with one another and,
if anyone has a complaint against another,
forgive each other;
just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.
Above all, clothe yourselves with love,
which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

So you want to know what the life of a person who really believes in resurrection looks like?
This is what it looks like:
It is compassionate, kind, humble, meek, patient, forgiving and filled with love.

We must live our lives like we believe Jesus rose from dead.
We must live as though we too have bee
n raised to new life in Christ.
Why?
Well, for one, because people look at our lives to see if the living Christ is a part of who we are;
to see if our lives are informed by the power of Jesus’ resurrection or not.
Second, and even more important,
because we ha
ve something the world and the people in it really need – hope.

There are, of course, many sources of hope in this world,
but most of them provide little more than false hope.
Politicians and politics or government.
Doctors and medical science and the hope for a miracle cure.
The search for that one person who will fulfill all our dreams and desires.
Money and material possessions,
which are perhaps best symbolized by the quixotic power of these:
(Hold up some lottery tickets.)
I was at the 7-11 last night,
and even though the jackpot wasn’t 230 million,
the line for lottery tickets was quite long,
and we all know how long the odds are for hope being realized in these slips of paper,
don’t we?
And yet millions of people place their hope in things like these and other pursuits that will prove just as futile.

But, my friends,  we have real hope.
A hope that comes from the power of resurrection.
Another of my favorite books is “Cold Sassy Tree” by Olive Burns.
I’ve used this quote before,
but it bears repeating today.
In her novel Burns has one of the characters in her book ask his grandfather about Jesus rising from the dead.
“Gosh Grandpa, You mean you don’t Jesus rose from the dead?”

“I’m a sayin thet did he or didn’t he ain’t important son.
What’s important is thet when the spirit-a Jesus Christ come down
on them disciples later,
they quit settin round a-moanin and a-tremblin,
and got to work,
They wairn’t scairt no more,
and the words they said and the things they did had fire in’m.
Compared to a miracle like thet,
Jesus rollin’ back a dang rock and flyin off to heaven ain’t nothin.

And thet same miracle is still a happenin right here in Cold Sassy,
in July of nineteen aught-six.
A crippled person or a invalid, or the meanest thief of most
despairin misfit,why, if can ketch aholt of the spirit of Jesus Christ,
he can quit bein scairt and be like risin from the dead.
Once his soul gits cured,
no matter what his body’s like,
why he can start a new life.”

We have this hope to offer, my friends.
New life.  Resurrection life.
In Jesus sin has been conquered.
He is the alpha and the omega,
the beginning and the end
He holds the keys to hell and death
In Jesus, death has died.
This is the hope that the world needs.
That every man, woman and child needs.

And this thought, this truth, brings me back full circle to Owen Meany and his friend John Wheelwright.
John Irving says that Owen Meany was an instrument of God,
that God used Owen to do his work, to do his will.
Isn’t that what God does with all of his children?
Isn’t that what Jesus expects of his disciples?
Not only to live our lives as though we believed in Easter, in resurrection.
and in their life-transforming power,
but also to be his instruments and to share the hope we have in Christ with everyone we meet?

John Wheelwright said,
I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice –
not because of his voice,
or because he was the smallest person I ever knew,
but because he is the reason I believe in God;
I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.
What faith I have I owe to Owen Meany.,
A boy I grew up with.
It was Owen who made me a believer.

If we believe, really believe in Easter and in resurrection,
don’t we owe it to God,
don’t we owe it to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith,
don’t we owe it to those who are not here this morning,
and who are not in any church today,
to share our faith, our love, and our hope with them?

When the angel met the women at the tomb on that first Easter,
his words to them were simple and to the point:
Go and tell, he said.
And when Jesus met them on their way back to the city,
his words were the same:
Go and tell.
Go and tell my disciples.
And later in this same chapter he will repeat and add to these words:
Go and tell,
Go and make disciples.
Help others to believe so that they too may live,
that they too may have hope,
and that they too may know my love.

This morning we have told each other that Christ is risen.
When we leave here,
let us tell the world,
everyone we meet, the same,
showing them by our words and with our lives that we really and truly believe.