The problem with Easter is not how to celebrate it--we gather in worship every Sunday to worship the Risen Lord--no, the problem with Easter is how to live it.

The prophet Malachi offers an astounding promise of hope as he concludes his oracle. God promises that “for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings; you shall go out like leaping like calves from the stall.”

That is Easter. But looking around the room this morning, I think it a safe bet that it has been a while since a good many of us leapt and bolted about like wild calves. Oh, we are still plenty active and we can still hold our own in a batch of areas, but leaping like a calf has slipped from the list of options.

The truth is that for many of us, we need the hope and the renewal of resurrection more than we would like to admit. We need to feel alive again. We need to feel the free joy of living. We need to experience the unbridled optimism of a bright sunny morning.

Resurrection was and is a miracle. When the women went to the empty tomb, they knew what to expect--confirmation of the darkest day they had ever spent in their lives. They went prepared to stare death in the eye. They went prepared to mourn and to grieve. What they found broke with all reason. It was a mad folly to believe their own eyes. There had to be an explanation, some cause rooted in their own dismal expectations--someone desecrated the tomb; an animal broke in and carried Jesus away; something like that. But none of that fit--it was Resurrection.

Tommy Tomlinson is a columnist with The Charlotte Observer. He got the golden opportunity to “work” Thursday afternoon by spending ten hours at a Charlotte sports bar watching college basketball. As the games ended for the evening, he wrote, “Sometimes you just need an escape. There’s a tight presidential primary…The financial markets are taking a kick…we just marked five years of war in Iraq. This is no time for games. Then again, there is never a time for games, but somehow we need them, just as we need water and air.”

He’s right. We need some pause in the action of the world. He only mentioned a few things that occupy our minds at the moment. He very well could have added the violence in Tibet that has even drawn a man of peace like the Dalai Lama into the fray. He could have mentioned all the folks threatened with losing their homes in the housing slump. He could have mentioned three-and-a-half dollar a gallon gas. He could have mentioned the countless personal crises we pass through with our families as illness, death, and accidents pull at us. Life is chaotic, more than we ever want to deal with.

We all could use a little resurrection--the sudden entrance of the power of God that upends the world as it is and replaces it with the world as God intends it to be. “He is not here,” the angel tells the women. “He is risen.”

But, we might argue, that was Christ and that was the salvation of the world. What has that to do with our world? What has that do with me? The reality of resurrection is within our grasp. Its promise and its actuality are present, even here in this hour on this morning. The Stewardship Ministry of our congregation has enclosed an insert in this morning’s bulletin that describes the work our congregation is engaged in as we come together. Step outside in the garden and see the mounds of dirt and the missing wall from the building.

Baldly, with the eyes of the women going to the tomb, what do we see? Just activities any church does and a bunch of broken bricks and mortar. But with the eyes of the Risen Christ, we can see so much more. Here are signs of his presence, tools he can use, ways for us to follow him.

After the Resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples, still reeling from the events of Good Friday, still smarting from their awareness of their abject failure to be disciples in any shape or form. John tells us that Jesus sought out Peter in particular--Peter who suffered the ignominy of flatly denying he ever knew Jesus, just as Jesus had predicted he would. Jesus confronts Peter and commands him to now reveal his love for Christ by feeding his sheep. He is not castigating the broken disciple in this moment, he is redeeming him. He is offering Peter resurrection. He is pulling Peter from the abyss of despair and guilt, offering him a chance to get it right.

So, too, does God offer us resurrection. If all we are doing is rearranging the bricks of our building, if all we are doing is simply trying to act busy, then God help us. We are still lost within the world, blindly blundering about in its darkness. But if we will see the Resurrection as our call to fill these bricks with purpose and to make these tasks ministry, then we are on our way to realizing the Resurrection in our life together. Today, we can listen for the voice of Christ, intoning to us, “Feed my sheep; tend my sheep; feed my sheep.”

We can experience what it is to be raised up. We can leap again like a calf freed from the confines of the stall.

Mr. Tomlinson pointed out the darkness of the world. He was grateful for a few hours respite from the actual news of the world to watch a bunch of college kids play ball. But he knew full well that outside the confines of that sports bar, the world was the world. The same afternoon he watched basketball, Charlotte witnessed these events, too--a teenager died violently in the streets, a group of restaurant workers got deported after being arrested at work, the police arrested a man after he killed a police K-9 dog, and so on. Mr. Tomlinson walked out of the sports bar into the world shrouded in the dark of night, a darkness of weight on the soul.

We gather here and hear again the good news of the Resurrection. But unlike a basketball game, this is no diversion, no distraction, this is something else altogether. This is an answer to the world in which we live. This is light that shines in the darkness that the darkness cannot and shall not overcome.

And we can dwell within it. We can have the light shine all through us.

Look at that list of activities and pick one. Come join us. Come work. Look at that list of activities and support them in any way you can. These are not just activities. This is not just a building. This is a gathering in the presence of the Risen Lord. He calls to us, “Feed my sheep,” not to shame us, but to redeem us. What he is really saying is, “Join me! Run to me!” Yes, we are stretching our limits doing all we do in this place, and, yes, some would say we’re silly to bite off so much. But we aren’t doing it just to do it. Christ has called us, Christ has challenged us to feed his flock.

There is an odd thing about the life of the church--the more we set about doing the work of Christ, the more we ask him to take charge and to lead us, the more alive we become.