Christ is risen
Dear First Pres SLO Family,
Grace and peace to you in the name of the Risen One, Jesus the Messiah, who lived and loved and served and died…and rose again, proving that God has authority over all things, even death.
Christ is risen!
Christ is risen, indeed!
What a joy-filled time we had on Easter Sunday! The Sunrise Service at the Stapps’ home was beautiful, and the sanctuary was full for our 10am celebration, complete with horns and timpani and our wonderful choir. After all the reflecting and repenting of Lent, it was wonderful to let loose and sing our Alleluias and say together:
Christ is risen!
Christ is risen, indeed!
After all the waiting, we finally got to celebrate the Empty Tomb.
Now what?
It’s easy to feel a letdown after such a huge celebration. It’s easy to follow up the mountain top of Easter with a descent into the reality of our everyday lives, filled with problems and struggles and even disappointments.
Christ is risen! (I’ll wait)—now what do I do?
Part of truly experiencing Easter is soaking up what that special day represents. Easter means that God can be trusted to have power over death, and that’s meant to be an enormous source of joy for us. But it doesn’t mean that all of our problems magically disappear. Easter requires of us the capacity to trust that God will make good on the promises we see in the Bible, and that requires us to know those promises. Otherwise, we miss the point of the resurrection.
Henry Nouwen wrote this in celebration of Easter:
Easter brings the awareness that God is present even when his presence is not directly noticed. Easter brings the good news that, although things seem to get worse in the world, the Evil One has already been overcome. Easter allows us to affirm that although God seems very distant and although we remain preoccupied with many little things, our Lord walks with us on the road and keeps explaining the Scriptures to us.
The key is for us always to remember that something important happens in the resurrection of Jesus—something is wholly (and holy) different about us and about Creation. That means that even when God might feel distant, we have seen the Easter miracle and we know that we’re not alone. For the people of the resurrection (that’s us), hope is the only option. Karol Wojtyła, whom we know as Pope John Paul II, wrote this:
“Do not abandon yourselves to despair.
We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.”
And so the answer to the “now what” question is this: Even when this life does its best to get in the way of our Easter joy, our job is to put our faith in the resurrected Messiah, and to keep singing our hallelujahs.
Christ is risen!
Christ is risen, indeed!
Thank God!
Blessings to you this Easter season,
Pastor John