Easter People

Easter morning I was wrestling with the question posed by one of our young ones who wanted to know what Jesus said after he was raised from the tomb. How do we explain to young ones that we don’t have any record of what Jesus said the moment he was raised? This was going through my head when one of our young girls raised her hand and said excitedly, “Oh, I know what he said! I know what he said!”

I turned to young Claire and asked her, “Claire, what did Jesus say?”

Claire raised her hands high in the air and said, “Ta-Da!” Everyone laughed.

Can we believe Easter? Can we just laugh with all of our heart on Easter Sunday? We are so busy dividing each other into us versus them, can we really believe an event in which life has the final word over all of our division, all of our destruction and violence, and over death? Easter is so joyful for me because I know, I know with every fiber of my being that love and life will be the only thing left standing in the end. Love and Life.

I really want to know why we spend so much time in the business of death. We don’t really believe life. It sounds too good to be true. We would rather be creating an us versus them world, a world in which we try to exert control over anything that might threaten us, over anything that might not look or sound like us. We would rather live in a world in which fear guides our thoughts and actions, not love.

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, “Pastor, you need to grow up. We live in a world governed by fear and power. You need to accept that. You need to scare your people and exert a high degree of control if you want to be successful. Everyone knows that. Grow up.”

I don’t buy that. Not for a second. To me, that is the easy way forward, lacking any kind of resiliency and toughness. The people who can love and laugh regardless of what life throws their way, those are the people who are tough, resilient. They know that life will have the final word. They don’t downplay the destructiveness of this world, the violence that happens. They are well aware of it. But they have taken the message of Easter deep into their hearts and minds, deep into their core and very little can shake them. Those are the people I look up to in this life.

I have met a number of people in this world who are like that. Easter people. Some of these people have gone through a lot of sorrow and suffering in their life and some have not. They have taken the violence the world throws at them and have done what they could to deal with that violence. But they also know that destruction, division, and death will not have the final word. Not by a long shot. They already know that life is triumphant. Easter people.

Are you an Easter person?