Some years it seems Easter’s new life is just out of reach for so many… bad things and death just never seem to let go… Even as we have been preparing for Easter and God’s triumph over death, death has snapped back with a vengeance. And like the bizarre weather, there have been a lot of bizarre things that have gone wrong. It has been really out of the ordinary. (Although the ordinary wear and tear and sadness and sorrow and separations have continued unabated, too.) Lost airplanes. Sunken ferries. Mudslides which still entomb a town’s worth of victims. Shootings and school stabbings. Earthquakes. Wildfires. Truck and bus accidents. An avalanche on Everest. This is just strange stuff, almost like evil and death are being intentional at catching us by surprise. It makes it hard to arrange Easter lilies and talk to children about new life. It takes more than a little faith in things as yet unseen to believe in resurrection this year.
Theologians write about the church living in “the time in between,” the time between Christ’s divine victory over death but before we regular humans experience it fully for ourselves. We know in our hearts and from the Bible that the strife is over, the battle won… but bad stuff still goes on. People we love get sick or injured or die or have discouraging reverses in their lives. Hospitals and funeral homes are still needed. Death seems to hang on like winter, not really relinquishing our lives to spring and Easter. Commentators liken this to the skirmishes that still occur after the decisive battle is won but victory has not been secured. Death is defeated but not done making us miserable. Some preachers like to phrase it as a time when death is defeated “already but not yet.” Although it sounds better in the long Greek or German phrases theologians use for already vanquished but not gone yet, it feels to me like this extended not-quite-spring-no-matter-what-the-calendar-says is very much the meteorological parable to this spiritual state.
But the way we cope with the inconclusiveness of the season and its mud is not a bad way to relativize sin’s and death’s persistence. We put away the heavy winter coats and hang the lighter jackets at the front of the closet. We rearrange the garage so the mower is in front of the snow blower. We plant flowers. We decide to “Think Spring.” We “set our minds on it.” We set our minds on Easter beyond Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. We set our minds on life instead of distress. It is a super set of thinking positively (which is not being blind to the negative but consciously deciding that goodness trumps it). Thinking spiritually is very powerful, even if some of the ways we implement it are kind of simple. We dress our children in bright Easter clothing. We buy pastel candy eggs. We choose to interact with the good around us instead of being dragged down by the bad. And sometimes that is a very conscious, very intentional, very determined, very against-all-evidence choice. We decide to see the light instead of the shadow. We decide to look for little flowers in the mud and not the mud. We choose life. We choose Alleluia.
Come join us Sunday (whether at Lakeview at 6:30 or either service at 9 or 11) for the bright shining promise of resurrection, of spring in our souls, and faith in the life to come!
In Christ,
David
Texts For Sunday Worship:
From the Epistles Acts 10:34-43
From the Gospels John 20:1-18
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