After Love Wins

Easter morning, we greet the new days with shouts of Alleluia! The stone has been rolled away and the tomb is empty. Jesus Christ has risen! He has risen indeed! Love wins! During our Lenten journey we followed the worship series “Lookin’ for love in all the wrong places”. We have explored the gift of Jesus through the themes of the resister, helper, thirst quencher, shepherd, liberator, and the unexpected. Holy Week has given us the opportunity to reflect on the story of Jesus and his ministry and consider what love looks like to us.

So, what does it mean when Love wins, and what do we do afterwards?  To summarize in the simplest words, Kenyan biochemist and poet Aloo Denish Obiero explained Easter as the following. “From death came life, from sorrow came joy; this is the hope of Easter.” The Easter season invites us to celebrate Christ’s victory over death and sin, his resurrection from the grave, and his ascension. This 50-day period from Easter Sunday to Pentecost is a time of great hope and joy as we rejoice in the promise of eternal life and new beginnings and await the gift of the Holy Spirit. It in many ways is a time of preparation as we put our faith in action, for we are part of this story.  John 20:29 “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed”.

Faith calls us to live out the truth we know in our hearts and continue what Christ started. Pope John Paul II reminds us to “do not abandon ourselves in despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.”

Yet how do we even begin to love the world as Jesus loves? How can we begin to put back together what greed and ignorance has divided? What can we do to make this world the vision that God desires? Isaiah 58:9-12 gives us a path forward and steps to follow:

“If you get rid of unfair practices,

    quit blaming victims,

    quit gossiping about other people’s sins,

If you are generous with the hungry

    and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out,

Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness,

    your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight.

I will always show you where to go.

    I’ll give you a full life in the emptiest of places—

    firm muscles, strong bones.

You’ll be like a well-watered garden,

    a gurgling spring that never runs dry.

You’ll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew,

    rebuild the foundations from out of your past.

You’ll be known as those who can fix anything,

    restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate,

    make the community livable again.

(The Message)