Easter Message . . . both . . . and . . .

The older I get the less I experience life as either/or but much more as both/and; less that things have to be this way or that and more that there are diverse threads that are not contradictory but woven together in a tapestry revealing a richer, fuller, more authentic experience of life. While it is tempting to divide things into separate buckets, making it easier to control (or at least give the illusion of control), the older I get the more I realize that life is complex and complicated, messy and truly remarkable!

The celebration of Easter proclaims this reality of life and the world. Easter cannot be embraced or embodied without Good Friday. The proclamation “Christ is Risen” means that Jesus died and was buried in a tomb. He rose from death. His death on the cross was not the end, the hopeless defeat of his mission to proclaim the reign of God. It was the beginning of the victory of love over hate, revealing the awfulness of human suffering, humiliation, and weakness and the depth of God’s transforming love for us. The day on which humanity executed God’s son is called Good. Jesus suffered and died and rose again. His resurrected body did not erase or eliminate the suffering of Good Friday. He continued to carry the wounds visible on his body. On Easter, we celebrate suffering and joy; hope and doubt; death and new life.

We will gather on Easter Sunday all across the world (this is the year that the celebrations of Easter in the Orthodox and the Western churches are the same) and sing “alleluias” while children in war-torn places will be crying from pain and hunger. We will proclaim as the sun rises that “the Easter Day with joy was bright” while our neighbors continue to live in fear and oppression, uncertainty and death. We will trust that “love comes again like wheat arising green” in a world where there is so much hate, division, and distrust. None of these realities diminish the other realities but help us to embrace even more deeply the promise of Easter, to live the hope of Easter, to be people who have indeed risen to be the body of Christ in a wounded world.

May this Easter empower us to Break the bread of new creation where the world is still in pain. Tell its grim, demonic chorus, “Christ is risen! Get you gone!” God the First and the Last is with us. Amen 

Christ is risen and so are we – risen with new hope, love, compassion, and courage – to bring life, new life, to this world. Amen.