What would be the real Easter to you right now? Is there some dramatic event that, if it were to happen, would so surprise and amaze you that you would be completely blown away by it? I’ve been thinking about this question off and on for several weeks now. On the day after Easter I drove to John Knox Pavillion to receive my second covid vaccine and it felt like real Easter. A turning point. And in a few weeks many of us will gather on the front lawn for worship and I’m already longing for it and I have a hunch it will feel like real Easter.

The Bible paints for us two possible ways that folks experienced Easter. For some folks, it was a dramatic moment in which they knew that everything had changed, Jesus was alive and God’s love won a dramatic victory. But for other folks, it was a slow dawning. At first they just felt numb and lost and befuddled. But slowly, over time, they realized that he was alive in them. When they gathered together, the living Christ was there.

My hunch is that over the coming year, as we begin to re-emerge into communal life, that we will slowly discover ways in which we have been transformed. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins prays, “Let him easter in us; be a dayspring to the dimness of us.” (The Wreck of the Deutschland) The miracle of Easter is that the God who raised Jesus, will raise us too. Begin to imagine what that may look like for you and those you love, for us as a community of faith and for the incredible planet we share.

Grace and Peace,
Carla