and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve (1 Corinthians 15:4-5)

The Lord is risen! For nigh on two thousand years it has been the honour, the privilege, the joy of those who lead worship and who preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ to pronounce those words, to make that proclamation, on this most special of Sundays in the year. We don’t tend to do this in the Church of Scotland, but in many denominations the congregation responds, “He is risen indeed!”

What is this rising that we celebrate on this Sunday? There are some who mock the faith and refer to the risen Christ as “zombie Jesus”. Now I’ve seen zombie films. I’ve yet to see a depiction of a zombie as articulate as the risen Christ we hear described in the words of our gospel writings. Nor would I imagine that a zombie would have the sensitivity or the compassion to respond to the distress of Mary Magdalene in the way that Christ does. No - that kind of remark is just mindless mockery. This risen Christ has one more time to live - and not as some shambling creature of modern horror stories. More. Much more.

More, too, than the life lived by others who had been raised to life by Jesus. Those people would go on to lead full human lives here on earth but they would eventually die. Jesus has one more time to live, but this time it’s for eternity. This is what Christ’s rising from the dead is about: it’s not just the restoration of life, but the beginning of a new life. And in that there is a promise - a promise for you, for me, and for all that will hear the voice of God ringing in the world through this great turning point in history. An opportunity for new life for all.

There are those who will say that none of this ever happened; that all this is a story made up to make us all feel better about the prospect of death. I can understand that, but here’s a thing. Jesus was, as far as the ways of the world go, an ordinary guy. The son of a carpenter, born into poverty in the least fashionable part of a backwater of the Roman empire, he had a few years as an itinerant teacher - mostly in the boondocks - then got nailed to a cross and died. So did lots of people. You know what happened to most people like that? They were forgotten.

Something must have happened. According to Paul the risen Christ was seen by lots of people. That’s a pretty big - and easily falsifiable - claim to make. What we can be sure of, though, is that reports of Jesus’s resurrection didn’t begin with Matthew, Mark, Luke or John - they were spread widely across most of the Eastern Mediterranean by the time any of them set pen to paper, or even by the time Paul was writing, twenty years after the event. I’m going to suggest to you that right from the get-go, right from the first followers of Jesus, they were proclaiming, “The Lord is risen”; and why? Because it was nothing less than the truth.

What of those followers? They found that they too had one more time to live - that they had a new life: a life lived in Christ, following his teachings, sharing the love of God, spreading the good news that God loves humanity so much that he came into the world in Christ to share our lives with us, to embrace us in our pain and our sorrow, to share our laughter and our joy and to show us - not just with words or symbols, but by living example - that life eternal awaits us.

That’s not just a one-off deal. As human beings we sometimes lose sight of what we are meant to be - of what God created us to be. We fall into bad habits of thought or word or deed. We grow selfish and uncaring. We listen to the words that circulate in the media that tell us that those who are different - those who flee to the southern shores of Europe from starvation, poverty or war - are not our brothers and sisters. We buy into the tales we are told about a feral underclass that dwell on sink estates and live a life of idleness or drunken addiction on benefits we pay for: tales that tell us they are not our brothers and sisters. We fall away from the message of love that Christ brought us.

But that’s not the end. Any time we need it, whatever we’ve done, however we’ve lived, however we’ve messed up we can wake up each morning and come to God in Christ and find we have one more time to live: one more opportunity to live the kind of lives we are meant to live - lives that are characterised by compassion and kindness; by generosity of spirit and openness of heart; that reflect the love of God. And when our mornings are all used up, when we come to our last day we still have one more time to live; this time, though, it will be for eternity.

So let us be bold. Let us be confident. Let us face today with a song in our hearts. There are those who will tell you that what we do here is a waste of time. There are those who will tell you that religion is dying, even as the number of Christians in the world keeps increasing. There are those who will parrot mindless slogans like “zombie Christ”. So what? If we are treated with contempt in this world for our beliefs, so what? If folk mock us in this world for our faith, so what? We have one more time to live, each day, and if we live it doing what we believe then it’s a life well-lived. And when our days are done we have one more time to live: this time for eternity.

This is what the rising of Christ at Easter means - that we can be confident; we can be bold - as so many of our forebears in the faith have been. I was listening recently to Jim Cavaziel - the actor who played Jesus in “The Passion Of The Christ” - who was talking about the oppression of Christians in other parts of the world. What he said is that, as Christians, we can face all sorts of trouble with boldness and confidence. There is nothing that the world can do to us that can separate us from the love of God: it can beat us, curse us, kill us even and we still have one more time to live: this time for eternity.

We take our place, this morning, among the millions who have borne witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ whatever the opposition. Back in 1930 a Russian leader called Bukharin travelled to Kiev to address workers on atheism, now the state religion of the Soviet Union with all the threatening power that implies. he regaled them for an hour then asked, “Any questions?”. One man stepped forward, raised his arms and proclaimed, “The Lord is risen!” With one voice the crowd responded, “He is risen indeed”.

The Lord is risen. He is risen indeed. These are the words of our faith. These are the words that encapsulate the hope that lies at the heart of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that God loves his children - loves each of us - so much that he will never let us go. That we are safe, for eternity, in his love. So let us rejoice. Let us be bold. Let us be confident. Let us proclaim the love of God for all his children in all we say and do. I invite you to make the response that Christians have made, on this day, for the best part of two thousand years: The Lord is risen!

Lord we rejoice in the rising of your Son and its promise for us of eternal life with you. May we live each of our days here in the light of that promise, reflecting that light into the world as your children

Preached at Gretna:St. Andrews Parish church