Of Things Divine and Orange

Good morning everyone. Happy Easter. Alleluia! It sure feels good to say that. Seeing the church bursting at the seams gives me a really good feeling. May the rest of the day be as joyful for you as this moment is for me.
Every time I celebrate a big holiday I can’t help but think back to my childhood. I love to recall the anticipation, the parties, the great food, the presents, the candy, and the traditions --- Easter egg hunts, tree-trimming, and playing tug-of-war with the wishbone, to name a few. They were good memories --- I still treasure them to this day. But as someone who has had a lot of formal religious training, I can’t help but also think back to the different ways I understood these holidays from a religious standpoint. Thanksgiving, the most secular of the three, had to do with the pilgrims, the Mayflower, Native Americans, and of course turkey. I don’t remember thinking about God too much on that day. Christmas was different. I knew that God had something to do with that. But for me it was simply Jesus’ birthday --- a good reason to have a party and exchange presents. I knew Jesus was special, but beyond that I didn’t give it much thought.
Easter, for me, was the most overtly religious day of the three. And I still remember how I understood Easter, how I had been taught to think about it in my religious education classes (or CCD for those of us of a certain age). As a child, I understood Easter to be simply the day Jesus rose from the dead and opened up the gates of heaven. That’s it. Very succinct and to the point. Jesus died and rose from the dead to open up the gates of heaven. That’s what Easter meant to me. And I certainly wasn’t wrong.
Obviously, when we teach our young children, it’s probably good to keep things simple. Giving them a detailed or nuanced explanation of something might only confuse or frustrate them. We’re wise to make sure they have the basics first. But when we never really revisit what we learned as children, we might grow into adulthood with an impoverished understanding of something --- one which might mislead us as we grow older.
For me, Easter was a little like that. You see, for many years after that, probably into my twenties, I still saw Easter as the day Jesus “opened up the gates of heaven”. And you may wonder what’s wrong with believing that, what could be the problem? Well, it’s not so much what is explicitly in that statement – it’s what the statement implies that is the problem. Simply put, as I thought about Easter in that way, I was, at least to a small degree, falsely clinging to the idea that Jesus suffered, died and rose so that something could be better for me in the future, at the end of my days. No longer would I have to fear death. It was precisely because of Jesus’ saving act that I could now hope to be in heaven with God for all eternity. The blessings, graces, promises, and fruits of Easter assured me of good things in the distant future, years from now. In other words, I would have to wait (possibly a long time) before Easter made a difference for me. And nothing could be further from the truth.
My dear friends, today we come together to celebrate and give thanks to our Lord and
God for his incredible act of love. We know we don’t deserve it. We know we never could have done it on our own. And we certainly know that we could never have earned it, no matter how many acts of kindness we perform over the course of our lives. The incredible life-changing power of the resurrection is pure gift, the gift of God’s very self to each of us. God has shown us just how powerful love is, the incredible difference love can make in this world. The most perfect expression of the power of love has come to be through the one who loved perfectly --- even in the face of great pain, sorrow, and suffering. Jesus loved completely to the very end, and as a result, even death no longer had power over him. Jesus did indeed open the gates, heal the wounds, bridge the chasm, reconcile a broken world. And we are forever grateful.
But make no mistake about it. Jesus’ triumphant resurrection is not simply for the future. That’s the narrowest understanding of the resurrection we could ever hold. Rather, the power of his saving act has been unleashed on the world, in every time and place, in every situation, and in every human heart --- and none of us need ever be the same again. Jesus loved and everything changed. If we are able to love, even if imperfectly and in small ways, we too can share in that transformation --- and thereby change the world. This is no pipe-dream. This is God’s promise. God didn’t die so that everything (especially us) could remain the same. He died so that we could be new creations --- sharers in an abundance of life beyond our biggest dreams and wildest imagination.
Love has the power to change everything it touches. Jesus showed us that. And no one is transformed more by love than the one doing the loving. And so maybe the best way to give thanks to the Lord for his incredible act of love is to look for more opportunities to love in our own little corners of the world, and thereby begin living the new life God wants for each of us. Jesus may have died so that we can be with God in heaven. That is true. But that heavenly experience --- that communion with God, the sharing in his life, the tapping into his love and mercy --- begins this very moment, and is renewed in us each and every day of our lives. In a certain sense, heaven has already begun.
This is the Paschal Mystery, an embracing and carrying of whatever comes our way in this life, knowing that those things will never have the last word, never get the best of us. But more than that --- the struggles of our loved ones, the brokenness we see in so many places and relationships, the crosses we individually carry --- do not simply have to be endured. Rather, they can be rendered powerless and transformed by doing something simple but difficult at times --- loving no matter what, no matter what hand we are dealt, no matter what comes our way. The difficulties of life will often still be there, but the way we see them and experience them can be completely different. God died, in part, so that this could be so, so that we could be truly created anew.
Alleluia! He is risen! Let’s truly celebrate this day by choosing to love --- and by doing so, allow God not to simply change the world, but change each and every one of us too.