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Easter Week
Easter was a great experience for me this year. Lent and Holy Week were a
special progression in my devotional life, and sharing this season with First Bonita for the first time provided its own joy. But most of all, Sunday morning, Easter morning was such an amazing celebration: followers of Jesus gathered to profess the risen Christ, the hope of the empty tomb, and the world-changing gift of resurrection.
And then Monday happened. And Tuesday. Wednesday, Thursday, and
Friday. The world kept spinning and its disruption was far from absent. I don’t
know what all those days brought for you and others – I am writing this on
Monday, after all – but I know just as sure as the saying goes, “Sunday’s coming”, that so is Tuesday. And sometimes Tuesday, or Wednesday, or Thursday… they can be enough to feel as though the light of Easter is already fading, or to allow our hope to be overwhelmed by fear.
I share this not as disappointment or judgment, but acknowledgment and
confession. The world is powerful, the darkness is present, and it can feel like
hope is out of reach. Even in the days following Easter.
In recognizing this in my own experiences over the last few years, I’ve been
reminded of the unique promise of Jesus. The promise, as John’s Gospel begins, not that darkness is gone, but that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1.5). Which feels applicable not just to Easter 2025, but to that first Easter, when, amid selfish motivations among his own followers, infighting among his own religion, and political manipulations from an oppressive state, Jesus chose to trust in love.
He washed the feet of his disciples, including those who had betrayed and
would deny him, and welcomed them to the table set with the gifts of his own
body and blood. He healed a man who had come to take him away, prayed for
those driving in the nails, and promised paradise to one of the thieves crucified
next to him.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
The promise of Easter, the hope of resurrection is the foundation of this
belief: even the world’s greatest power, death, is overcome. It’s why resurrection speaks to us here and now as we face our own experiences of betrayal, denial, injury, and fear. We can also choose to trust in God’s ongoing work of love, in the light that shines in the darkness, rather than taking up the tools of betrayal, denial, injury, and fear.
And that is hard work, which I believe – at least for me – is why it can be
frustrating to face it in the days following such an incredible Easter experience. But the promise of God includes the good news that we never have to face it
alone. So I celebrate the privilege of being a part of this body of Christ. That we can be in this world together and at this work together. And that we can always turn to God in prayer and discipleship and worship and be fed with hope again. Forgiven again. Filled with love and light again.
Because Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Ben Richards
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