“Easter people are people of hope…”

by the Right Reverend Thomas Clark Ely, Bishop of Vermont
Mountain Echo, May 2003

Christ is alive! Let Christians sing. His cross stands empty to the sky.
Let streets and homes with praises ring. His love in death shall never die.

The words of joy and hope from this great Easter hymn of praise (# 182) proclaim the Good News of Easter: Christ is alive! Having walked with Jesus through his suffering and death during Holy Week, we are brought once again into the light of resurrection and invited to share its joy as Easter people. Christ is alive! Let Christians sing!

Easter is, because God loves. We can't control it, we can't change it, and we can't stop it. We can only rejoice in it—or not. We can only live into it—or not. When we rejoice in it, and when we participate in the joy of Christ's resurrected life, we become a brilliant source of God's light and love for each another and for the whole world. God welcomes our sharing in the joy of Easter, not only in our life as the Church gathered, but even more so in our life as the Church scattered, disbursed, sent into the world. It is in our daily living—not just in church on Sunday—that we are invited to be disciples (followers) and apostles (witnesses) of Jesus Christ. At home, at work, at school, at play—wherever we find ourselves—that is where we are called to be God's Easter people.

Easter people are people of hope, people of expectation, people of joy. It is not that we are always happy in some artificial, contrived way, oblivious to the pain, hurt and need that is all around us and within us. It is, instead, that we have the capacity to hear and speak God's word of love and hope in the midst of that pain, hurt and need. As Easter people, we acknowledge and proclaim the truth of God's great love for the whole world. We acknowledge and proclaim the promise of resurrection faith: that in death, life is not ended; it is changed. We acknowledge and proclaim the triumph of Easter: that there is no grave, no tomb, no place of darkness, despair, or disbelief where God's love cannot reach and bring forth life.

God knows the world needs Easter people now as much as ever. Throughout the Lenten season just past, we have lived with war as an all too present reminder of our human condition, our human inability to fully embrace God's love in our relationships with one another on this planet. I don't believe that God is on anyone's "side" in war. I am relieved that the corrupt and murderous regime of Saddam Hussein is no longer exercising its cruel and inhumane dominion over the people of Iraq. At the same time, I am sad and deeply distressed by the extreme violence used to end that regime and by the innocent victims, known all too euphemistically as "collateral damage."

I don't want violence and war to be the way human beings settle their differences—not in families and not in relations between countries. And so, as an Easter person, I continue to hope and believe in a better way. That way was not the way this time, and maybe it will not be the way next time, but I believe it is the only way that offers the lasting possibility that there will be no next time.

Archbishop Rowan Williams wrote these words as part of his Easter message to the Church: "At Easter we recognize what God has done; and if God has done it, it stays done, as we say! There is a new world. At every moment it stands at the edges of our failure and violence, and nothing can take it away, nothing can build a wall so high that it cannot impact on the everyday world. But it comes always as a surprise, just as the resurrection came as a surprise (not as the solution to a problem). What makes it clear that the resurrection is God's action, is precisely the fact that it reshapes everything, that it doesn't fit into our small world but demands that we grow into a bigger world, God's world."

Easter people are alert and alive to that surprising God at work in our lives and in the world around us. And so we make our song:

Christ is alive! His Spirit burns through this and every future age,
till all creation lives and learns his joy, his justice, love and praise.

Alive in Christ and singing the song of Easter,
+Thomas