Sermons
With heavy hearts, you may be more open than ever to see Easter revealed among us in surprising ways. You may be more open than ever to envision a new society, a new church, a new way of walking on the earth. You may be more open than ever to share your deepest heartache and listening with compassion as others do the same. You will indeed walk on, as the beloved song from Carousel names. “Walk on, with hope in your heart and you’ll never walk alone.” Community, indeed. But now more than ever, we may also find the gift in standing still. In being with what is. In expressing our fears, our tears, our hopes, our prayers. In leaving silence for someone else to cry or to lament. With burning hearts, with open eyes—and with one another—we will walk on. And I am sure of this: through the resurrection of Christ, a new tomorrow, filled with Easter hope, is already dawning.
Christ rose from the dead to liberate us from our captivity, to bring us into the fullness of God’s family, and to be found by God’s divine love over and over and over again. The Marys have shown us what it looks like to dare to be found, and they were found because the first thing that the risen Jesus does is to go find others to invite into a life of divine love — a life of love that death cannot destroy. This morning is your reminder that you have already been found by God’s Divine Love, but it’s also your invitation to live into God’s Easter liberation and to dare to be found again and again by God’s divine love!
Christ speaks words of peace and words of beauty to us this day—even amid our insecurities, our doubts, our pride, our indifference. May Easter open your eyes. To see the earth coming alive. To see the amazing gifts in each new day. To see the risen Christ among us in bread and wine. To see the image of God in our siblings, especially those most different from us. And finally, to see what you too often miss: that you are beautiful!
Today you may be here filled with fear and doubt and that is ok. Jesus is not waiting for us to get our house in order and open the door. Jesus is breaking the houses we lock ourselves up in offers to us peace and breathes on us the liberating Holy Spirit that frees us. And if that image is too abstract for you and you need something more real to touch and to taste, come to the table, and like Thomas, experience Jesus’ real presence with you. Through that real experience of resurrection, the Spirit is at work, giving us ordinary, fearful, doubting people extraordinary boldness to declare, “My Lord and my God.”
