Dear Easter People,
I am contemplating what that identity means for us — that we are indeed Easter people. It means that even in the midst of death, we see life. Even in the midst of loss, we see hope. I think it means that ours is the capacity to claim hope at all times. Dr. King, on his last night on this earth said, “I’m happy tonight. . . Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”
I think that is it. Even in the realities of today and tomorrow, we can see the coming of the Lord. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to be fully realized. It just has to be true. God is rising, living in our midst. That is our hope — and that is enough.
My mother has been gone one year. She died just a few weeks before last year’s Easter resurrection. I know many of you share a similar loss. Last year, her funeral was on a Friday, one week after Good Friday. I felt the poetry of that timing. We gathered this last week on Good Friday, in descending darkness, to claim the truth and the aching emptiness of Jesus’ death. We also felt, on that night, the depth of the loss that hollows out our own lives. Last year that loss was particularly fresh for me. And yet, one week after that Good Friday, in a sanctuary in Visalia, CA, I stood in the certainty of Easter’s hope. The lilies of Easter still adorned the sanctuary at Christ Lutheran in Visalia. As family, we carried in more flowers, and my mother’s faith, and we boldly claimed Good Friday’s truth and Easter’s promise — on the same day. That day, I saw the glory of the coming of the Lord and I felt nothing but hope, because I knew that death and life were both true at the same time, and I could feel the certainty that hope held the day.
Dear people of God, the cross of Ash Wednesday can still be felt on our foreheads. We have walked the road to Calvary on Good Friday. But that is not all that is true for us. Like Mary, we found ourselves at a tomb in the early dawn, waiting for a miracle — and we were not disappointed. In the light of yet another Easter dawn, Jesus joins us in the place where sorrow and joy can both be true together.
Jesus joins us in the thin places of our lives. In those places where the veil between this world and the eternal world is so thin, as to be imperceptible — that place were God is near. May you find your thin place this Easter season. May you find your place from which hope can be seen, and more importantly, felt. May the Spirit draw so near, that you can feel her wings drawing you into tomorrow’s dawn.
Blessings dear Easter people, Pastor Laura