Easter Sunday

     I have no idea how many times I have stood at a casket in the church, or with a grieving family in their home and wished that I could do a resurrection.  The pain of those moments is intense and all consuming.  What everyone wants simply can't be done.  We want our loved one back with us, healed and without pain.  That is clearly impossible, so what are we doing talking about resurrection?

     The gospels that are chosen for funerals are all about rising from the dead.  Jesus and Lazarus with both Martha and Mary fairly screaming at Jesus that "If you had been here, my brother would not have died," and then the verse about Jesus' tears, "Jesus wept."  What are we to do with this scripture in the face of our own crying need for resurrection?

     What Easter points to, for me, is the intensity of our hold on life and the relationships that we have formed, and how much we love.  I once had a funeral for a man who had terribly abused his family and who finally drank himself to death.  The family sat huddled together in pews about halfway back in the church, over by the windows.  They just wanted to get through this ceremony and get back to their lives.  I struggled with what I could say to them that would help them to see this man in the presence of God, forgiven and redeemed by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.  What was really necessary here was to begin a conversation that would lead to the family forgiving this terrible man so that they could go on from here with an outlook that pointed to joy rather than hatred.  I talked about what a difficult man he had been and how it was nobody's wish that he be back in our midst again.  But that there was a place for him in God's Kingdom, and that if eternal life was our destiny, we would see him again, but not as he once was, but as he would become in the light of the Love of God.  That is what Jesus brought us in his life, and also what he bequeathed to us with his death and resurrection.  That is seldom easy to see.  It is easy in the case of beloved people who die in the arms of their family, but not very easy when that family is estranged by abuse and turmoil.  I hope that I was able to start a conversation within that family that day.  I know that their father and husband was enfolded in God's arms and blessed by God in eternal life.  That is the only way that it can happen if we are going to ascribe to God the hope and the joy that we so yearn for in this mortal life.

     I think that Easter is the annual promise to all of us that our sins are forgiven and that eternal life is always ours.  That is what Jesus promised to us by the living of a life among us, by bringing the Almighty God to earth in flesh to live our life with us.  God certainly understands the conflicts of life, the horrible temptations that we all endure because God endured them also in the flesh of Jesus the Christ.  I hope that your Easter is blessed, and that you come to understand the redeeming presence of God in the wholeness of your life, and the eternal promise of a risen life in the peace of the Kingdom of Heaven.