Feast of the Victory of Liberation
Today we have something to proclaim. Not just the preacher from ontop his or her pulpit. But we the people of God. We have something to proclaim in the streets, in the workplace, in the countryside, in the fields, in the hospital wards, in the back alleys. Today is the Victory of Liberation!
Throughout Lent we have taken the less-travelled road. At times, we were wondering what we were doing there. Particularly when we found ourselves at the foot of the Cross. Just as one follows a heavily overgrown road through dripping pines and arching ferns that suddenly opens onto the bright and spreading ocean, today we find the road opening to the ultimate triumph of life and liberation.
For the person of faith, and faith is both a choice and a gift, Easter is a consolation and a promise rooted in truth.
There is no real consolation for the people of the lie. All the glamour and excitement of the heavily traveled road that we had eschewed ends in bitterness, violence, boredom or an associated alcohol-or-other-drug-induced haze.
There is no real liberation for the people of the lie. As they moved down their road, they made unnoticed choices for an ever deepening slavery. Their devotion to power, pleasure and/or possession became their ultimate subservience.
We proclaim that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and overcame sin and death, once and for all. This is the liberation at the heart of all of our struggle against oppression. This is the victory in the face of apparent deprivation and the setback and failure encountered on our journey. This is the truth to which we tenaciously adhere in a world of deception, illusion and calculated falsehood.
The less traveled road of Lent has been a journey to this destination. The ensuing Sundays recall Easter again and again throughout the rest of the year. We who struggle for liberation can live with courage, dignity, confidence and hope. Today we have something to proclaim. “We are Easter People and ‘Aleluia” is our song.”
Imaging Easter
Easter celebrates what is most definitive about our Christian faith: The Resurrection of The Christ.
Who we are is defined for us in clear terms: We are Easter People.
Many, many years ago in Oakland, I was privileged to be part of a group of ministers called the “Flatland Fathers and Sisters.”
One day, after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, we were visited by a young man who had been a drummer in King's contingent. I clearly remember him telling us, that, after King had been shot, he was the one who held the bleeding and dying body in his arms. And the realization hit him then and there that Christians were more about Good Friday, the death of the Christ, than about Easter, his Resurrection.
And I have thought a lot about that ever sense. How Good Friday, an not Easter, is our “default” Christian image as we try to live out our faith in this world.
We can more easily embody the Crucified Christ in our Christian teaching and actions
than we can the Risen Christ. We can embrace suffering and defeat; we can retreat to a time and place not here and now; we can show the world a face of endurance and penance; we can preach denial and rejection.
Easter People, on the other hand, are about peace, and joy, and hope.
Easter People embrace the eternal youthfulness of the Church and are marked by enthusiasm.
When things are the darkest, when everyone else gives up, that's when the Easter People shine most brilliantly.
We never give up on peace. Even if history and present circumstance resort to war to resolve conflict, we are an Easter people.
We never give up on justice. Even when we experience the many forms of oppression that surround us, every day, we are an Easter people.
We never give up on compassion. Even when the struggle for domination destroys life in its wake, we form bonds of compassion, for we are an Easter people.
We never give up on hope. Even when we see people disowning their brothers and sisters because of the destructive and pain causing patterns they have fallen into, like serious drug and alcohol addiction, or a pattern of crime and imprisonment, we are an Easter People.
What we celebrate today is the life that overcomes death; the love that overcomes hate; the promise that finds its fulfillment in a Community of Believers.
“We are an Easter People, and Alleluia is Our Song!”
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