April 2005 - We Are Easter People, Not Optimists
We don't have to look very hard to be reminded that we live in a "Good Friday world." Good Friday, so ironically named, is the day that the forces of death and devastation seemed to triumph over the power of love. God's very Son, love incarnate on earth, was murdered by a religious and political establishment acting solely out of fear - fear that the gentle revolution of love might mean the transformation of their well-ordered lives and the undermining of their authority. Of course, they were right on both counts.
Good Friday represents every premature death of the promise of life...every act of hatred or cruel indifference that destroys or diminishes the precious gift. We don't have to look very far. In the previous week or so our hearts have been burdened by the vicious murder of a judge's husband and mother in Chicago, a senseless massacre in an Atlanta courthouse, another Columbine-like killing spree in a Minnesota high school, the sad politicization of family decisions regarding a Florida woman's end-of-life; on one day there were eight murders in Philadelphia; and on and on. And then there is the fear. We seem to be a nation living in the grip of fear of terrorism and making too many decisions based on that fear. When fear is in the driver's seat of life, the day of the week is always Good Friday.
Tony Campolo, a community activist evangelical Christian, once related a sermon he heard delivered by an African-American preacher. The "punch line" of the sermon, repeated with mounting fervor after each telling of hard realities faced by devastated people, was this: "It's Friday - but Sunday's coming!" Sunday, the Day of Resurrection - not just on Easter Sunday, the one on which we tell the story with special enthusiasm, but every Sunday is a "little Easter," reminding us of the throbbing heart of our faith. That's why the early Christians broke the 4th Commandment and made Sunday, the day of Jesus' resurrection, their sabbath.
We are Easter people who know that the end is life, not death. That knowledge means everything as to how we live in a Good Friday world. Resurrection is not just a transformation that happens at the end of our earthy life - its power reaches back into all of life to assure us that God is at work bringing life out of death, even as God was present on Good Friday, a day on which even Jesus wondered for a time if he were God-forsaken. God's resurrection work in the world is often hidden; even the eyes of faith fail to see it completely. But we do experience this power of life-stronger-than-death here and there, now and then. It makes all the difference.
We are Easter people but not optimists. Optimism puts on rose-colored glasses and sees the "sweetness and light" but not the bitterness and darkness; naïve optimism lives much of life in denial of the awful realities that plague life and is easily disillusioned. It bypasses the cross. What makes us Easter people rather than mere optimists is that we move through Good Friday to Easter, neither denying the power of death nor granting it final authority in life.
The hearts of Easter people are still heavily burdened by the signs of death and the unspeakable sorrows that visit life - our lives and the lives of innocent victims in many places of God's world. But knowing that love is stronger than death, we take heart and live our life with courage and fortitude. And in so living it, we shall discover that our God of resurrection is the Lord of all life, and the conqueror over death itself.
The weeks between Easter and Pentecost are the Easter Season, sometimes called Eastertide. May they especially bear the gift of God's vulnerable but victorious love for your life.
Pastor Floyd Churn
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