Easter Sunday (2024)

Happy Easter! May the risen Christ, whose death and Resurrection from the dead have won eternal life for us, be with all of you.

Do you recognize the name Khaby Lame? You don’t? Khaby Lame is a Senegalese-Italian social media content creator with 80 million followers and is the most followed person on Instagram and TikTok. Social Media Influencers are content creators with established credibility on the Internet. They have access to a large audience and, therefore, the capability and outreach to share information about products and services to their followers in exchange for compensation from providers of goods and services.

Today, we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the most incredible content creator and influencer ever. We celebrate an influencer who, though he lived almost two thousand years ago, is still professed by 2.38 billion Christians to be the greatest influencer in their lives. We celebrate an influencer whose greatness is acknowledged not only by Christians but by people of other faiths and no faith at all. He is more influential than other religious leaders like Confucious or Mohammed. He is more persuasive than political leaders like Augustus Ceasar and Genghis Khan or philosophers like Karl Marx and Thomas Hobbs. Jesus Christ’s influence is still so astonishing that even today, hundreds here in Chatham, millions in our country, and billions throughout the world will take time today to worship Him.

What is astonishing about this influencer, Jesus Christ, is that he grew up in obscurity. He never wrote a book, held a public office, or led an army or multi-national corporation. Jesus never owned great wealth and wasn’t a man of letters or academic degrees. During his public life, he didn’t have a permanent address. His human life ended in a very horrific and humiliating way. Roman governors executed him, at the behest of the Religious Authorities, on a cross to die of suffocation and blood loss. It is the most brutal form of capital punishment imaginable.

After his death, his enemies believed his influence would disappear. They thought his impact would quickly dissipate and his small group of followers would disband like many other flash-in-the-pan movements. They were so sure Jesus’ effect would fade they didn’t even try to arrest his followers as they cowered in fear in the Upper Room.

Most often, when a person dies, their effect on the world diminishes. Jesus’ influence has only grown over the centuries since his death. Jesus is still the most influential person to have ever lived. His followers inhabit every corner of the world. Even humanists recognize Jesus’ great impact on people’s behavior.

In today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles, St. Peter proclaimed the reason for Jesus’ impact. He said:

"God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power.

He went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil,

for God was with him."

To be influential, someone must have the compelling force to persuade others actions, behaviors, opinions, and ways of thinking. Regardless of your opinion of Jesus, you must acknowledge his decisive impact on Western and worldwide culture. It is growing even today. We see Jesus Christ’s influence in placenames, art, architecture, music, and science.

We see Jesus’ influence in great buildings like St. Peter’s Basilica and Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral. That inspiration is exhibited today in the great effort to rebuild Notre Dame, which was damaged by fire a few years ago. That building, inspired by faith in Jesus centuries ago, will be rebuilt in five years, even though early projections were that it would take twenty years; such is its great symbolism for the French people, even if their faith practice might be lax.

Jesus influenced artists like Fra Angelico, the Father of Renaissance art, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Michelangelo. He influenced musicians like Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Handel. In science, Jesus influenced the work of Copernicus and Gregor Mendel, the Father of genetics. Every discipline includes people of faith who used Jesus to inspire their groundbreaking work.

Jesus’ most remarkable influence on culture was his teaching on how to treat one another. Jesus’ teaching completely transformed the culture’s perspective on the treatment of children and women and how we exercise leadership.

In the ancient world, leaders were in charge. The leaders aimed to make people dependent upon them and used them to further the ruler’s goals. Jesus remarkably taught that leaders were to be the servants of others. They needed to care for others. We still have many self-serving leaders today, but the model Jesus taught was that of a servant leader and a slave to those in need.

Jesus taught differently about the treatment of women. Judaism was unique among the world’s religions because it taught that both women and men were made in the image and likeness of God. Although Jesus’ most close followers were the twelve Apostles, all men, he invited women like Mary Magdalene, the woman at the well, and Lazaruses’ sisters Mary and Martha to follow. 

Jesus’ attitude towards children was also groundbreaking. While respect for children is assumed today. In Jesus’s time, they were often considered a liability until they could contribute to their family’s economic welfare. They were disposable, dependent, defenseless, fragile, and vulnerable. Jesus changed that when he embraced them and declared that the Kingdom of Heaven would belong to those who acted as innocent as children.

Jesus has had a tremendous impact with his disciples, founding schools, universities, hospitals, and orphanages. His most lasting legacy is the movement he founded. In Greek, it is called Ecclesia, a work for the betterment of the greater community. We call it church.

On Good Friday, this movement should have died with Jesus. That isn’t what happened, though. Peter, in today’s first reading, reports that despite Jesus’ death, God was with Jesus and raised him on the third day. Peter reports Jesus’ disciples, witnesses chosen by God, saw Jesus in the flesh, ate, and drank with him. Another place in scripture tells us Jesus didn’t only appear to those closest to him but to more than five hundred people who recognized Jesus as alive even after his death.

If Peter’s claims about Jesus are valid, a man who predicted his death, was raised from the dead not as a ghost or spirit but in the flesh, then he is a man worth listening to and letting influence our lives.

Peter also tells us that Jesus, history’s all-time greatest influencer, commissioned every one of his followers to be influencers. Before Jesus ascended back to the right hand of the Father in heaven, he commissioned his followers to preach to the people and testify he was the one God commissioned to free humankind from their sins and be the judge of the living and the dead. Each of them was to become an influencer and share what they had heard and seen while they followed Jesus.

We are here today to celebrate our belief in Jesus Christ, His Resurrection, and our call to be influencers for Jesus. Jesus calls us to share the Good News that Jesus, obedient to God the Father, took up the Cross and gave his life so that we might experience true freedom in our lives. We are to witness God’s desire to have a personal relationship with each of us so we can enjoy the gift of Eternal Life in heaven. As Christians, we must follow Jesus’s way and share his teachings, thoughts, power, and lifestyle.

Jesus instructed his disciples to dream big but to act small. They were to dream huge. He ordered them to dream of making a disciple of everyone. They were to imagine every nation as being devoted followers of Christ. He wants a relationship with everyone.

While dreaming big, they were to act to influence others in little ways. They were to act in subtle, small, and even silent ways to impact their families and community. As Jesus’ witnesses, they were to help more and more people follow him so that big things could happen in our community, state, country, and all the world.

Kaby Lame probably won’t be Instagram and Tick Toc’s most significant influencer for much longer. Someone else will start posting more appealing content, and they will overtake his popularity. Even after almost two thousand years, Jesus is the most influential person ever. His followers still turn the world upside down by following his example of service, love, and mercy. They are still opening hearts and transforming lives for those who want to come to know Jesus.

Over the weeks of the Easter Season, Deacon Art and I will continue to develop this series of Homilies. We will continue to discuss lessons taught by Jesus’ early followers about how they came to follow Jesus and have a tremendous influence on the world. Come every week and learn more about how you can become Jesus’ influencer and impact this world with Jesus’ teachings.

It is an ancient Christian tradition to renew our Baptismal promises at this Easter Mass. These promises were spoken for many of us while we were still infants. Today, listen to them and really recommit to them. If you aren’t baptized, you can make these promises for the first time. You don’t need to, but you’re welcome to do it. Recommit today to work to let your relationship with Jesus flourish and grow through daily prayer time and the celebration of the sacraments every week. Let your relationship with Jesus, the world’s greatest influencer, thrive like never before.