Easter Day: March 31, 2024
The Rev. Nat Johnson
Acts 10:34-43
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
John 20:1-18
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
Last night we ended the liturgy of the Paschal Triduum. The liturgy is a single service that takes place during the last three days of Holy Week, beginning with Maundy Thursday and ending in the Great Vigil of Easter. On Thursday we heard again the new commandment Jesus gave to his disciples: “love one another,” Jesus told us, “as I have loved you.” Love with a love that inclines the whole self toward another, love with a love that satisfies hunger and eases burdens. On Friday we listened to the passion of God as we recounted the arrest, trial, torture, and execution of Jesus. We were invited to sit at the foot of the cross without rushing through the discomfort, without tamping down the longing that gives shape and depth to our hope. The cross stood then, as it stands now, as an indictment against humanity’s quest for power and control, and the violence through which we seek to grasp and maintain it. But the story doesn’t end there. Yes, the cross is the object of God’s judgment but it is also the site of God’s forgiveness and liberation.
On this day, Easter Day, we proclaim as a gathered community that death could not extinguish the Life that enlightens all people. We bear witness to the power of God to break open the finality of death and proclaim that life will always have the last word. Bewildered as we may be, we stand today as a testimony to the new creation that God is bringing about in, through, and among us. The hope that Jesus elicited in his followers, which had been devastated by the crucifixion, has been ignited anew in the resurrection of Jesus.
In our present moment, I wonder if it is possible to feel the shudder of hope deep in our bones from that proclamation. I wonder if it is possible to feel the twinge of awe and bewilderment that comes from being enfolded in this mystery. I wonder if it is possible to imagine the new creation that is coming into being because of the uncontainable life of God that bursts open in Jesus’ resurrection.
We come to this celebration today steeped in stories of death: we are, finally, on the other side of a pandemic that over the last four years has killed millions across the globe. Millions of others around the world – from Ukraine to the Philippines, from the Middle East to Haiti – contend with manifestations of evil as they bear the weight of cruelty and violence, war and political strife. We come to this celebration today in a society where division and difference are negotiated from a place of fear. We come to this celebration today in a country that has birthed a national religion under the guise of Christianity, but which is steeped in racism, xenophobia, and white supremacy. Perhaps some of us come to this celebration today holding grief and sorrow and anguish from our own losses. I wonder if the weight of all these death stories has trapped us in the confusion and cruelty of Good Friday or the numbness of Holy Saturday.