Just when you think you know how the world works, God comes and turns everything upside down.

On Maundy Thursday Jesus taught his disciples that bosses are now servants, and servants are bosses, in fact, there are no more bosses and servants in the Kingdom of God, but all are servants of each other, bound together in love.

On Good Friday Jesus taught his disciples that vulnerability is victory, that defeat is glory, that failure is success, that the only way that violence and hatred can be overcome is with love and forgiveness.

And now on Easter Sunday, Jesus is teaching us that death is life, and that humanity is now divine, as the divine is human.

Last Sunday we contemplated God in Jesus, hanging on the cross out of love for God's fallen creation, taking responsibility for all the sin and suffering of the world. God had to become human for God to know the full extent of our fallenness. And so God did the unthinkable thing – God did not hold us to account for our sins. God took those sins upon God's own self, and paid a terrible price of abandonment, suffering and death.

Some would say, “Well, if God takes responsibility for all my sins, then doesn't that allow me to just do whatever I want and keep on sinning?” Well, yes and no. If you are some kind of sociopath, who is not moved by suffering, who doesn't have any compassion, yes, I suppose so. But then you would keep on sinning anyway.

But when we see the suffering of Jesus, we are deeply moved. It is always moving to see the victim of an injustice. And seeing this suffering arouses compassion. Compassion is made of two latin words: con, meaning with, and passion, meaning suffering. We suffer with Christ. That's what it means to be baptized into the death of Christ. This is what it means to eat his body and drink his blood at communion. We are joined to him, we have communion with him in his death. We take his death into our bodies, just as he took our body to his death. We think about his suffering, we have compassion with him, we are grateful to him, and so we participate in his death.

And then we are transformed. Because when Christ participated in every single aspect of human life – including death – human life was taken up into the life of God. And was transformed. Now all human life is caught up in the life of the divine. As Peter said, there is no distinction based on ethnicity or culture. “Everyone who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to him.” God and humans are joined together on the most basic level – right down to the DNA.

And this is activated in our baptism. As we participate in the death of Jesus, we also participate in the resurrection of Christ. Christ's life is in us. We are in Christ as Christ is in us. And new life begins.

John is pointing to that new life in the way he writes his account of the resurrection. You notice, that Mary comes to the tomb “while it was still dark”. This may remind us of the darkness and chaos before the creation of the universe, while “the earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the deep.” That is certainly how Mary must have felt in her grief. Life had no shape now, no content – her life was in darkness.

And of course, where does this story take place? In a garden. Just like the first garden, the garden of Eden. In the garden of Eden, God had grieved because the first humans were lost to him; now Mary is grieving because she thinks that God is lost to her. No wonder Mary thinks that Jesus is the gardener; he IS the gardener of the new Eden. And the fruits that this garden produces are love and joy and peace.

This is no longer the first day of the week, the first day of creation. Sunday has now become the eighth day of creation, the day of new creation. Eight has always symbolized the resurrection; when you come up for communion, take a look at the font and see how many sides it has!

Everything is different now – the very rules of the universe have changed. Death no more has dominion over the universe. God is changing things, slowly but surely, and you are a part of that change.

For this God-life that has become a part of you in your baptism will not be denied. It will grow in you, Christ will grow in you, and you will find yourself less and less attracted to sin. You will find yourself more interested in caring for your neighbour. You will become more and more the person God wants you to be.

And in the end, even death itself has lost its sting. The psalm that we read earlier is the one that I read at a burial, standing beside the open grave: “This is the gate of the Lord; here the righteous may enter.” Or, as the choir sang last week: “Here, O Lord, the very death I fear is that which draws me near, Lord, to Thee.”

Death has become life. Sorrow has become joy. Guilt has become forgiveness. God has turned everything upside down. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

 Just when you think you know how the world works, God goes and turns it all upside down.

  We all have an instinct for self-preservation. That instinct leads to fear. We fear many things, but above all we fear dying. And our instinct is fight or flight. If we can't run away from what we fear, we become angry. And our fear of violence turns violent. Violence erupts from insecurity, from anxiety, from fear. And then it turns and becomes evil. People start to enjoy the power that they get from putting the fear onto someone else with violence. And so the cycle continues, violence begetting violence.

We are told that God hates violence. Right near the beginning of the world, there was violence on the earth, and God decided to wipe the earth clean of violence with a flood. Didn't work very well, did it?

How could God stop this never ending cycle of violence? This endless round of fear and self-protection and lashing out, this grasping for power over others to ensure one's own safety, this blood lust and cruelty?

God met it head on, in person. God in Jesus gave himself over to the darkness.

God’s love is so strong that Jesus is willing to submit to violence in order that his followers might see once and for all that violence is not the answer.  For in the face of violence Jesus refuses to employ violence but instead insists that God forgives us. We remember today Christ’s willingness to sacrifice himself so that no more blood would be spilt and no more bodies destroyed for the sake of sin.

Jesus confronted the fear and evil that constrains us from being the loving creatures that we were created to be. And this gives us courage to also confront the demons that lurk within. It gives us hope that we do not have to be captive to fear, captive to violence, captive to sin. We are confident of Christ’s promise that God is gracious and violence will not win.

Dog eat dog is the way of the world, the way of our instincts. But Jesus' kingdom is not of this world. Jesus transcends instinct and shows us a better way. Jesus empties himself, and becomes obedient to death, even death on the cross. Jesus shows us the way of forgiveness and reconciliation.

Because when we are faced with fear, when anger grabs hold of us, when our sufferings seem too much for us, when despair overtakes us – Jesus has been there. Jesus knows what we are going through – even to death. And there we find that love is stronger than death. Thanks be to God. Amen.