Easter hope, Easter challenge
by the Right Reverent Thomas Clark Ely, Bishop of Vermont
Mountain Echo
May 2006

Alleluia! Christ is risen.
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

In the Gospel of John, Mary Magdalene is the first person to arrive at the tomb and is later the first witness to the resurrection. Her announcement to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” becomes the first of many such proclamations of witness to the power and possibility of God’s liberating love at work in the world. From her witness to the witness of Peter and the other disciples, and down through the ages to this very day in all the circumstances where our witness is offered, the ancient salutation on Easter Day proclaims the heart of the Christian Faith: Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

The vitality of the Christian faith, however, comes not just from hearing or saying these words, but from living these words and from countless encounters with a Living Word, a Living Christ, a Living God, who gives salvation meaning to the Easter proclamation. Mary Magdalene proclaimed her faith in God and the resurrected Christ because she experienced the crucified Jesus alive. It was an experience that would not permit her to continue her former relationship with Jesus but one that demanded a new relationship with the risen and glorified Christ, who knew her and called her by name. That new relationship was one of testimony, of witness, both in word and daily living to the transforming power of God.

Today, we stand in the tradition of those first witnesses who have, in the prophet’s words, “a new heart” given to us by God and “a new spirit” put deep within us. We stand as those who, in Paul’s words, “are buried with Christ” by baptism into death so that as Christ was raised from the dead we too might “walk in the newness of life.” We are those called to consider ourselves “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus!” We are those baptized into the priesthood of all believers. We are the Body of the Risen Christ! We are the Church, Christ’s disciples, witnesses to a living God and a living faith.

As witnesses to this faith, and as living members of the Body of Christ, we are called to come to our living full of the hope and promise that is the Easter proclamation, even—and especially—when that seems most difficult for us to do. We are called to be witnesses to this faith about God’s great power of love in all the tomb-like experiences of our lives, the lives of others and the world in which we live. And, because we are members of a community of faith, we buoy one another up as needed for the living out of that witness. In words that Bishop Barbara Harris has given into our hearts, “We are an Easter people in a Good Friday world.”

As God’s Easter people, I believe we are commissioned to bring a powerful resurrection witness to bear on the life of the world. And that is my Easter hope and challenge to us as a diocese.

I believe we have a resurrection witness of hope and possibility to bring to bear upon the greed, arrogance and self-centeredness that infect the stone heart of so many, including ourselves at times.

I believe we have a resurrection witness of justice to bring to bear upon the corruption, hatred, prejudice and cruelty of those who oppress, exploit or defile any human being or any part of God’s creation.

I believe we have a resurrection witness of compassion to bring to bear upon the hurting, the hungry, the homeless, the suffering and the dying conditions of God’s people in Vermont and beyond.

I believe we have a resurrection witness of love to bring to bear upon the forgotten, the abused, and the neglected—young and old alike—for whom God weeps tears of sorrow and lament.
And, I believe we have a resurrection witness of reconciliation and peace to bring to bear upon all the ways and means of violence and war to which people and nations turn so quickly in their fear and in their anger.

“Resurrection,” writes Sister Joan Chittister, “is about reconciling the light within us with the darkness around us. Jesus, you see, did not leave us with empty longing. Jesus left us with light, a direction, a way, a meaning, a truth. Consequently, the Resurrection did not change the world. On the contrary, the Resurrection changed the apostles who are supposed to change the world. What is supposed to be celebrated on Easter Sunday is not only that Jesus has risen but that we have risen by His rising to become something new and something bold and something strong.”

Mary Magdalene and the others who came to the tomb that first Easter Day came expecting to find only death, but instead they found life. Easter tells us that as Christians we should never assume that a situation contains only death. Instead, we should expect the possibility that God has been there before us. In our living, we should look for any signs of even small stones recently rolled away, because what others may see as only death—bodies, dead issues, a dead relationship, a dead community, a dead end job, a dead idea—may well have life within, waiting only to be discovered.

Alleluia! Christ is risen.
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!