Easter greetings to each and every one of you, this second Sunday of Easter!  We're invited to wallow in our Easter-joy for 50 days -which will take us right up to Pentecost on May 11^th.  Easter season is bracketed by two formative stories that tell of the origins of the church: Jesus and the Good News of the empty tomb, and the Pentecost story which describes the coming of the Holy Spirit who gathered up Jesus' followers into the community of the church -the body of Christ-on the heels of his resurrection.  These stories of Easter and Pentecost are essential in describing who we are as Christians and remind us that we're defined by the stories we tell.

It's the devotion of Mary Magdalene and her friends that we honor when we get up at the crack of dawn to come to an otherwise empty church on Easter morning, waiting to be told again the Good News:  Put away your funeral preparations.   Jesus is risen from the dead.   And we are the ones who face the daunting task of telling this good news to others, the news that God is alive and well in this small but faithful Episcopal church.

As much as we'd like to leave out the hard part of the story that leads towards the Resurrection -- the parts about denial and suffering and death and grief - our Lenten journey is not quite over, the story of Jesus' life on earth has not quite ended. It is wisely said that: "The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story."  This morning there are still things to be told.

Today's Gospel account partially mirrors what we are about to experience in Holy Week. This Gospel account is an intensive and intentional preparation for and movement toward Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday morning. Today we have, for the first time in John's Gospel a clear declaration of faith by Martha: "I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world." We are moving ever closer to Holy Week: Jesus' triumphal entry to Jerusalem, the last supper, Jesus' arrest, his Passion, his death and ultimately his Resurrection. All of these are foreshadowed in today's Gospel.