Oh Happy Day!!

I love Easter. It is truly my favorite holiday in the church year.  It might not get all the hoop-la in our society that Christmas does, but that’s OK.  Easter is God’s Good News to us in its purest form. Life over death. Resurrection. No more pain, or tears, or sorrow. Every time I preach a funeral, I preach a little Easter. Because of Jesus Christ’s resurrection, death is not the last word—for those who’ve gone before us, our loved ones who’ve died, and for us who struggle with the pain of death, who continue our lives in the valley of its shadow—death is not the end. 

            I think of Christ’s resurrection as that moment when eternity, melded into the material of human being, broke completely through the “veil” that divides this life from God’s Life.  Yes, we are called to live this life within eternity, before God as an ever-present Friend. Or as St. Paul reminds the Colossians, “You’ve died, and your life is hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3).  He says all that in the past and present tense.  We can say St. Paul is speaking symbolically, but there is a very real reality underneath that direct language. That reality broke through in Jesus’ resurrection. Because Christ lives, we too live (in the present!) through the Holy Spirit. 

            But there is a finality to earthly death. Jesus wasn’t resurrected in a world that had the privilege of an average life expectancy in the 70s.  Child mortality was 50% (!!) before the age of five. Fifty percent! In our modern world, it’s easy to see death as a natural part of life, but I don’t think God intends for a very large percentage of 3 year-olds to die. Heaven is overwhelmingly filled with children who never reached puberty.  

            Look at ourselves and the world we’ve created and what do you see? God’s image? Yes! And no… There is a finality to all of the death-dealing we do—at the very least we suffer its effects. So did Jesus. And yet he was God’s image (“…the exact imprint of God’s very being…” Hebrews 1:3).  God’s Son on the Cross.  God hallows all of life in him.  Christ’s resurrection restores that image in this life, in this world of existence with the promise that we too will share his resurrected glory (Colossians 3:4).

            Me?  I pray for knees and a back that won’t hurt.  I pray for when I won’t have to keep praying, “Lord, have mercy.”  I long for the peace and joy of the birds and lilies.  But the Risen Lord reminds me that that is possible now in his Risen Spirit.  Because of Easter.

Peace,

Pr. Christian