From the Pastor
A pastor tells this story: “ ‘My life is over,’ she said. She had just learned that the cancer had spread to her optic nerve and that she was going to lose her sight, her precious sight that had enabled her to create beautiful things. That which she loved the most was being taken away from her. But scarcely two months later, when I visited her in her home, I was greeted by music, beautiful music being played on the piano. ‘I’ve discovered a gift I didn’t know I had until I had to reach out for it,’ she said as she played Chopin beautifully.” The pastor concludes, “I thought it an example of Easter, how in life’s complete dead-ends there is something about Christ that enables him to keep coming back to us, keep bringing new life out of death and defeat.”
We can say Easter is this or Easter is that. We can debate the details of the stories as related in the Gospels. But it seems to me that finally, Easter is about the ability of the Living Christ to defeat death in whatever form it faces us. Yes, I wish I could tell you exactly where the empty tomb is located. I wish I had a photo of the stone rolled away from the entrance. But I don’t and I don’t worry that I don’t.
For the truth of Easter is not found in going back, but by going forward. For that is where Christ is, on the move, ahead of us, not behind us, always making something out of nothing, raising up life where once there had been only death, gathering a people where before there had been no people. We no longer have to make accommodation to hopelessness and death. I know this because I have seen Christ alive in you and in our life together, undeniably present in all the twists and turns, joys and sorrows of life. In the words of the hymn, “I’ll be there as I have always been, with just one more surprise.” And that, my friends, is Easter.
Gene
