Easter: A Resurrected Lord and a Resurrected People
As I write this, I realize that Easter is old news for many people. Holiday is over. People are back at work. Easter baskets put away for another year.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Sunday morning churches throughout Windsor and Essex County proclaimed the Risen Lord!! With loud sound, young and old marching around our worship spaces, we sing the good news that Jesus has risen. The God in whom Jesus trusted, has shown us that evil does not have the last word. The oppressive powers that try to snuff out the light of the world, do not succeed.
Easter morning we affirm our faith in this radical way of living that is Jesus. Christians proclaim a resurrected Lord and commit to living as a resurrected people. As Bishop Terry Dance told us on Sunday, Jesus’ resurrection is our resurrection! This is serious business. Such a way was misunderstood or perhaps understood and greatly feared two thousand years ago. What will be the response in Windsor and Essex as we live this way here and now?
Trusting in God’s love with the radical trust Jesus had ought to enable us to treat others with dignity, fairness, and compassion. Such trust ought to give us the courage to stand up for those who are too weak to effect change themselves. Who are the voiceless today? Jesus healed the sick, the possessed and dispossessed because they had been rejected by a system that had wandered away from the heart of God. He heals a culture as much as he heals an individual.
As Jesus’ own, we do the same. I recall the transforming Do the Math Challenge offered by Pathways to Potential in Windsor. How can one raise a healthy family on high sodium, high carb diets that many who live in poverty are forced to accept? Community gardens, fresh fruits and vegetables will transform this injustice in our time.
Our lives do make a difference. The litmus test of faith, any kind of faith, is more than how many bible passages you can quote or how succinctly you can express theology. Faith is something incarnated, born out through our lives – how we live and how we treat each other.
Our Easter hope? Our old ways will pass away and the new ways of love and justice will be born in all aspects of human life. What ‘s the point of a resurrected Lord, if those who proclaim him Lord, do not also allow the transformation of their lives? Such transformation is the hope for the world.