Easter, as we usually think of it, is about life and joy, flowers,
bunnies, chocolate and jelly beans. And those are all great. We need more joy
and chocolate in life. And everyone loves bunnies. But the thing about Easter
is that behind the joy, or perhaps alongside it, is also sadness, fear,
uncertainty, and doubt. Because, of course, a big part of the Easter story and
the discovery of the empty tomb is all that leads up to it—the cross and
denials, the confusion and doubts, and hiding in fear behind locked doors.
So, while on Easter morning we smile and get dressed up, we break
into the chocolate and jellybeans, there is often also a sense with the
disciples, tucked in the back of our minds, of wondering how these wonderful
stories of resurrection and new life could possibly be true. Jesus’ friends
struggle, and so, too, we, because we know first-hand that pain and death,
grief and loss are all part of human life, in seemingly great and endless
abundance. While the more positive, hopeful, joyful aspects of the Easter story
often seem elusive and harder to verify.
I have been reflecting on all of this a lot this week, as we’ve
learned more about the horrific terror attacks in Sri Lanka on Easter morning. Suicide
bombers killed over 250 people in churches and hotels as families gathered to
celebrate with joy the promise of new life in Christ. Catholic church services
were cancelled in Sri Lanka today, while Anglicans were urged to use an
abundance of caution in deciding whether or not to gather. And then, yesterday,
we learned of a shooting at a synagogue near San Diego, killing one and
injuring others as the Jewish community completes their Passover celebrations. It
was six months to the day from the shootings at the Tree of Life Synagogue in
Pittsburgh. The 19-year old gunman cited as inspirations the Tree of Life
shooting, as well as the mosque shooting in New Zealand, Hilter, and even Jesus.
Jewish targets, Muslim targets, Christian targets. All human
targets. And we feel helpless to stop the violence, helpless to stop the hate. We
can understand why the disciples locked their doors. Afraid of going out,
afraid of letting anyone in. Afraid of life.
But, the gospel tells us and our faith tells us, even as the
doors are locked, even as the disciples are afraid for their lives, hope breaks
in. Because Jesus breaks in. He literally breaks into their locked room and their
locked hearts, offering peace. “Peace be with you,” Jesus says. Peace. Do not
be afraid.
Jesus tells them, in fact he shows them, that they have no
reason to fear, because ultimately God is in charge—not the religious leaders,
not the soldiers or Pontius Pilate or not even Caesar. But God. Jesus appears
to them that Easter evening so that they know that their life and the life of
the world is really, truly, in God’s hands, God’s crucified and risen hands, despite
how it may seem.
Easter is God’s way of telling us that there’s nothing that the
world can dole out, however fearful, however horrific, that God can’t transform
into something better. Now, that transformation doesn’t erase what happened
earlier, it doesn’t make it go away—the wounds of Jesus’ crucifixion are still
there—but God takes it and is able in some mysterious way to bring new life. We
just don’t always know what that new life will be, or how it will look. It
likely will be different than life before, just as Jesus is different after the
resurrection. But it’s no less real.
But we have to believe, or maybe the better word is trust,
in the truth and power of resurrection. Speaking personally, I have to believe and
trust in Easter and resurrection, because without that belief and trust, all we
are left with is Good Friday. And, because I believe that God is always more
powerful than evil, that God is more powerful than death, and that God is more
powerful than the many Good Fridays that we exact on the world.
Now, like us, it seems that Jesus’ friends and disciples
didn’t come to this belief or trust immediately. That’s essentially the meaning
behind the Thomas story. It can take time. And sometimes we want proof. We want
proof that this faith of ours is not just a fairy tale. We want proof that it’s
really real. It’s okay to struggle, especially in times of grief, trauma, and
disorientation. Sometimes, like the disciples, we may not even recognize when
the new life of resurrection is standing right in front of us. If you remember
last week’s Easter story, the same was true for Mary Magdalene in the garden on
Easter morning, until Jesus called her by name, until she dried her eyes and
saw him standing there, with her, in her grief and doubt and love.
But hopefully, eventually, like Mary and like Thomas, we
realize that the love of God is breaking in and breaking through—helping us to
see and believe in new ways. In deeper ways than we could have imagined or
known. Hopefully, eventually, we realize that God’s Easter love is transforming
us, from the inside out, into something new, something different, something
more alive—even as each day brings its own new manifestation of Good Friday.
I said in my Easter sermon last Sunday that the resurrection
is not only, or simply, or even mostly something that happened to Jesus a long
time ago. It is something that happens to each and everyone of us. Resurrection
is the promise and reality of our life in and as the Body of Christ. It is the
reality that life is stronger than death. That love is more powerful than hate.
And that God lived and lives still in the midst of us—giving us life and hope, courage
and joy.
I’d like to close by sharing from a sermon preached by the
Rev. Richard Q. Elvee—my college’s chaplain from 1962 to 2000. He had a special
way about him—his words, his enactment of the liturgy, his Thomas-like
scepticism and embrace of questions more than answers. In a sermon called “A
Doorway in Time” he preached:
“Today Jesus comes into the human heart through a doorway in
time, a doorway, not to the past, but to a level of reality freed from time.
When we hear, ‘Peace be with you” in this church today, a presence comes
through the door. This is the upper room. The hands once opened to Thomas are opened
to us. The Resurrection is always beginning again; we do not have to find it by
a search of the past. It is an experience here and now if we begin to live in
the Lord’s peace. …for God is the beginning and the end of every time and every
place, so that in the midst of this mysterious life, which entails so much
suffering as well as joy, the doorways yield silently to the One who comes with
peace, lives and dies in us, is never absent from the room again.”
That’s the promise of resurrection: that God is never absent
from this room, from our rooms, again. As we gather today, allow God to break
in. Allow God to show you the wounds of the world, to fill your heart and your
soul with love and new life. Allow God to transform you with Easter life. And
then, allow God to shine through you to give new, resurrection life to others.
Because this Good Friday world needs that love and that life. It needs God,
shining through you.
To God be the glory: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
© The Rev. Matthew P.
Cadwell, PhD
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