DEAD BONES

SERMON PREACHED BY FR. TONY NOBLE ON EASTER DAY 2007

Col 3:1 "If then you have been raised with Christ."

Baseball fans were faced with a real dilemma this week end. Not only is it the start of the season, but for the first time the Padres played their home game on Good Friday evening. What is a Christian to do? Go to church - then rush home and turn on the television!

The dilemma of sport conflicting with Easter is not confined to San Diego. It is the same in my former country of Australia. Last week end was the opening of the Australian foot ball season and on Easter Day, my team was scheduled to play their first home game at 12:40 pm. No time for coffee hour after High Mass in Port Adelaide today! Actually because of the time difference the game is already over and I can tell you that my team won by 3 goals, thanks to a couple of heroes.

Whether it's baseball or football - we have our heroes in the team. And many of the players are idolized for their talents and their abilities. Fans have photographs of them in their bedrooms, and if they are lucky they might have an autograph.

And we also wear our team colors to show our allegiance and our connection. We wear our colors on baseball caps, on the cars, on a jersey. Sometimes if we have a hero we put his number on the jersey. All this to identify with our team - and in some cases because we have a hero playing.

For some people baseball and football are like a religion. And if they treat it as a religion then things like photographs, jerseys, caps and scarves are the relics of that religion. It is the way we can touch our heroes, come close to them, and feel their presence. All this because it seems to be a natural human instinct to have heroes, and to want to touch them. We are not confined to sporting heroes - but great leaders, people who live by examples we wish to follow – and, of course, the saints.

A few years ago there was a tour around the world of the relics of St. Teresa, the Little Flower. This French nun, who died at the end of the 19^th century age 24, has had a great impact on many Christians, and even people who don't go to church often. She is someone who can be looked up to as a hero - a spiritual hero, not unlike a sporting hero.

So when St. Teresa's relics went on tour great crowds flocked to venerate and look at her bones in a casket. What did they go to see - a few bones? A nice gold casket? To reach out and perhaps even touch? Not physically, but certainly they would have gone to feel they were in her presence. We should not be surprised. We live in an age when people want to touch the divine, when people yearn for something in their hand to connect them to the spiritual realm. A rosary connects us with the spiritual realm. We want to feel God's presence, and often we want to be healed of what is ailing us. So we want something that we can reach out to - some presence, some personal tangible thing.

But there is a great difference between hero-worship of sports stars and the saints.

Devotion to a team or a player highlights their natural talent and abilities - whereas the saints of God present to us supernatural lives.

And, of course, the hope of resurrection. The saints of God, the holy ones, can only be honored and venerated because they are children of the resurrection, and they have risen with Christ - and in heaven they still live. Risen with Christ - not just believed in Jesus, not only followed him, not only lived good lives - but are now risen with Christ.

This is the message of St. Peter in Acts. He didn't just invite people to believe in Jesus. He said they could have new life - could rise with him. Similarly in the second reading St. Paul tells the Colossians that we can be risen with Christ, and can receive a new life.

When St. Peter and St Paul talk about being risen with Christ they are not talking about life when we die - the heavenly homeland we know and hope will be ours. Not eternal life when we are dead like St. Teresa - but risen life now.

And what does this mean? It means now the world can be better. Now people can be better. Now we can be better. Now we can be full of love, peace, joy. Love can be found now. And found amongst all the violence, nastiness and filth of this world. Being risen with Christ means that lives can be reshaped to be more fulfilling, more spiritual, more joyful, more loving. Isn't that what our world needs? What it desperately seeks?

The world needs to come to the empty tomb to see the risen Christ and be reshaped by him. That is why Easter is the foundation and center of the Christian faith. For Christianity is about life now - and about the fullness of life now. Jesus said: "I have come that they may have life and have it to the full." And we receive that fullness of life every time we come to Mass and receive the Blessed Sacrament.

Unfortunately, many people find the resurrection hard to g rasp. It seems beyond the realm of modern thinking. They put their doubts and cynicism on the same level as we might put the relics of St. Teresa - dead bones of a dead person. Even the odd bishop looks at the empty tomb and only sees a conjuring trick with bones. Which contradicts everything St. Peter says. Jesus rose physically in his body on this day because the resurrection is for this life, this physical mortal life, as well as the next one.

All the references to Easter talk about Jesus being present in a living body, in a risen body. The risen Christ is no collection of relics! Because we live in this world and struggle through it the resurrection of Jesus belongs to this world, not some other-worldly experience.

This life is the only chance we get and the resurrection gives us every chance we need.

Anyone can see an empty cross and an empty tomb - but only faith can go from there to the Risen Lord. Without that faith you only see dead bones.

Why settle for a skeleton when Christ offers new life?