We are Witnesses to these things
Introduction Today is the Octave Sunday of Easter, sometimes referred to as Low Sunday. It’s been a week since we stood witness in this place and heard the good news definitively declared that Christ is Risen and death is defeated. As John Chrysostom’s paschal homily so poignantly proclaims: “Hades was embittered.” The world is heavy with death. The world is at war. Covid rages on into a 6 th wave. It is increasingly clear that runaway climate change is inevitable. Yet even leaving aside the catastrophe that is our present moment in history, death is always quite close to us in our every day lives. People get sick, accidents happen, life expires. Our one certainty in life is death. But last week we did something preposterous. We stood in this place and bore witness to the Risen Christ in our midst. We became, even if just for a moment, contemporaries of the disciples as witnesses to the Resurrected One. So, while we may have come here grieving, and may have left here only to f