In the weeks between Easter and Pentecost the lessons invite Christians to see the world in the new light of the resurrection of Jesus which we celebrated last Sunday. This week the lessons focus on what it means to believe in Jesus and his resurrection. How does believing in his resurrection change us.

To help us understand this mystery I am going to use an analogy and here it is. (show a florescent swirl light bulb). Sitting on the shelf somewhere in a store in your town is a common product priced at less than three bucks that will soon alter the fate of the entire planet. It’s a product that will solve some of the most profound issues facing our world: rising gas prices, energy consumption, global warming, dependence on foreign oil and chronic halitosis (okay, not so much the last one). It also looks kind of cool and will give the buyer a sense of selflessness and self-satisfaction all at the same time. At $2.60 a pop, just one of these products can save you $38 per year, which is a pretty good return on investment. Oh, and the product is good to last for about 10 years.

The potential impact of using the swirl is staggering. If every one of the 100 million homes in America swapped out just one incandescent with a swirl, for example, the energy saved would eliminate the equivalent pollution of 1.3 million cars on the road, save enough electricity to power a city of 1.5 million people, or close two power plants. If that’s not mind-blowing enough, consider this: The typical American home has between 50 and 100 light bulb sockets (go ahead, go home and count’ em!). What would the impact be if every home installed five swirls, 10 — 50?

So this light bulb is going to save the world and all of us in it. So what’s the catch? Somehow the message is not getting out.

So now we compare this light to the Light of Christ which we proclaimed on Easter by lighting a big candle which we keep burning.

The first lesson read today brings us the first clue about what is going on. If you go out and buy these light bulbs they will cost $2 more than the regular incandescing light. So right away you have the cost issue. Up front it will cost about 3xs as much as the regular light bulb. In the first lesson we learn that it cost the apostles their life in church. If we accept this light of Christ, then it will truly cost us something too.

Think of the first lesson. Jesus prediction has come true. The Apostles are arrested and put in jail for teaching about this new light of Christ. The high priest took action to stop people from hearing about the new light. Why because they need to protect their turf. If you bought the new light, Jesus you did not need those old lights anymore. No more sacrifices in the temple, no more offering in the treasury. So we will just declare this new light as false advertising.

But again God intervened and an angel let them out saying, “Go, stand in the temple and tell the people the whole message about this life.” So the Apostles did. But when the chief priests and elders gathered they found them again teaching. So they had them arrested again without violence and tried to dissuade them from teaching about the new light. Peter, however, said they had to obey God instead of men and went on preaching.

So there you have it. The cost of believing in Jesus and his resurrection is more than the other light. For some this cost will be too great. Others will figure out that although this light bulb costs more it last 10 times longer and so it costs less in the long run. Believing in Jesus resurrection of Jesus brings us a different and better from of life.

We can also turn to the Gospel and see a different kind of costs in believing in Jesus. We have Thomas in the story. For Thomas he had to give up his way of thinking about things. He had to give up the idea that dead is dead. In terms of this swirl light it is the same idea. You just have to give up that comfortable known issue with the light bulb and venture with this funny looking thing. Oh and by the way if you have one of those lamp shades that fit over a regular light bulb, it won’t work of this one. You might have to go out and get a new shade too.

But there is something even greater hidden in the Gospel that is a cost. It is hidden well too. You might notice that when Jesus appears to his disciples there is no mention of the fact that these guys took a powder at his greatest hour of need. You might also note that Jesus doesn’t even upbraid Thomas for his unbelief. Jesus models the forgiveness which he gives to the apostles. Jesus sends them out to forgive sins just as he did while here on earth. He begins without even bring up their poor behavior.

In the analogy of the light bulb, think an incandescent light gives out most of its light by creating heat. Heat like the heat of anger. But the new light, Jesus creates no heat at all. Just like in the gospel today. No anger just forgiveness and moving on to the things that really matter.

So here is another cost of believing in the light, you have to give up on your sense of justice. Actually you don’t have to give up on your sense of justice; you have to modify it quite a bit. You have to believe that the worst of the worst can be saved by the grace of God. If you have noticed at all these executions done by the state, this is not easy for people. Yet it is one of the costs of believing in the new light.

You might have noticed that the church gives us two readings consistently over the next five weeks. The first one is from the Acts of the Apostles and tells the story of those whose lives were transformed with Jesus as the faith spread. But the Church also reads from the Book of Revelation each week. Now you might wonder why? It seems like a strange choice for Easter season to focus on the things to come.

John survived all of church growth as we learn in the first sentence of today’s reading and how he says to us, “I, John, your brother who share with you in Jesus the persecution and the kingdom I, John, your brother who share with you in Jesus the persecution and the kingdom and the patient endurance, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.”

John wants to give a vision of the importance of the new life in Jesus. To do this he points to two things. First what we go through here in our struggle in this world and finally where that struggle leads us as it did Jesus.

The book of Revelations is important to Easter. Because it is tell us that we not only need to focus on bringing others to the light but also that doing so puts us in the middle of the struggle between good and evil. If we are to survive that struggle, we need to adopt the other worldly view. Jesus spoke during his arrest in the Garden to Peter and told him to put up his sword and think of the other world or the kingdom of heaven.

John is very good at giving us a vision of this. He even says in his opening remarks that he is taken to write this book for the seven churches so they can share his vision of what is to come.

So here we are, the week after Easter and now we must really put into place what it means to keep saying, “Alleluia Christ has risen”; “The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!”

So there are some choices before and there is a cost to each choice, just as there was for Peter in the first lesson and John in the second. But we are like consumers in a rut, we tend to come to church on Easter and the weeks following looking for meaning of this story in its familiar shape and packaging, usually in one of two configurations.

On one shelf there’s the “Jesus is alive and went to heaven, so that we can go to heaven when we die” product, in which the resurrection is seen as proving the prospect of life after death.

On the second shelf, the resurrection is a simple metaphor for new life. After all, the thinking goes, modern science knows full well that bodies generally stay dead so it’s not the disposition of the body in the tomb but the idea of Jesus being alive in spirit that really matters.

The problem with both of these packaged epistemologies is that they have a tendency to quickly burn out once the chocolate bunnies are consumed. If the resurrection is simply about knowing there’s a life after death or just feeling good about Jesus and spiritual things in general, it doesn’t illuminate much about our present lives or in the metaphor of the day at least not for long.

But you may choose to be different and choose this funny looking swirl of light and in the process save the world as we know but not in the sense we know it. You have to overcome some obstacles but then the future is much brighter for much longer.

In John’s terms from today lesson, you must choose a Jesus who is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. Another way of saying you must make this first in your life if you believe in Jesus resurrection.

So I say to you, Choose well which light you choose to buy.