‘An untamed witness for hope’

Enjoy our growing gallery of parish Holy Week and Easter photos.

Eastertide Greetings!

Someone once said that Christians are Easter people living in a Good Friday world.

When the Easter message of God’s love, mercy and transforming, life-giving power over sin and death intersects with the sorrow, pain and suffering in our personal lives and of others in the world, that Gospel message is saying to us and all who suffer or are troubled: “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming” (in the words of Tony Campollo).

The women who came to the tomb that first Easter morning were still living the pain and loss of Good Friday.  When the angels reminded them of all Jesus said and promised, they believed, and with new life, hope and courage, these untamed first apostles and witnesses to the resurrection ran to tell the male disciples that Jesus had risen.  According to the Book of Luke, the men, locked in their Good Friday world of fear, doubt, shame and guilt, thought it an idle tale.  The calendar said it was Sunday, but in their hearts and minds, it was still Friday.

When Jesus revealed his resurrected body to them, they too believed, and Sunday came. 

From that day forward, Easter became a radical movement, not a historical event or institution, but a life-transforming, culture-changing movement.  The Easter message was untamed and lived out with passion for God, for all God’s people and for God’s kingdom of justice and peace.

There once was a banner over a large church quoting the Gospel writers:  “Jesus Christ is risen, He is not here.”  I chuckled at how that might be misinterpreted as:  “He is not here in church!”  My experiences in visiting the 190 congregations of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts and in our ecumenical work with people of faith on behalf of God’s green earth, suffering from pollution and destruction, tell me that the resurrected Christ is very much alive and present in our churches and in our Good Friday world.

I see Easter people bringing hope in word and deed, not hope based on optimism or a specific desired result (like beating the New York Yankees on opening day) but hope based on the promises and power of God through Christ’s resurrection, of an abiding presence to sustain, heal and make whole those who suffer.  This hope is a gift from God.

During Lent we have heard Easter stories from Episcopalians and other people of faith returning from Haiti.  Christians living in a Good Friday world there still passionately believe in the presence of God’s love in Christ to deliver them from poverty, calamity and suffering in the years ahead.  Their hymns and prayers are an untamed witness and inspiration to the gift of hope that Christ’s passion and resurrection bring us all.

Such hope, abiding deep within us, reminds us daily that, when it is Friday, Sunday is not only coming, it is here.  Now.  Like the women at the empty tomb, let us run to tell others in word and deed with an untamed Easter passion for God and God’s people.  Alleluia!

--The Rt. Rev. Bud Cederholm, Bishop Suffragan