Easter Sunday 2019

Isaiah 65:17-25; 1 Corinthians 15:19-26; Luke 24:1-12

Raise your hand if you got an Easter treat this morning, like candy or chocolate. Isn’t that the best part of Easter? Okay, well not the best but a really awesome part of Easter? And then to hear beautiful music, and sing such joyful hymns? And to hear the words of hope from our Scriptures, and the promise of new life, of an end to weeping and distress, of an end to pain and suffering, to hear that new life is waiting for each one of us, and that Jesus, who was put to death on a cross because of his love for the world, has been raised, as proof of the new life to come? Easter is, by far, my favourite holiday. Easter is the proclamation that God’s love for the world endures even through death. Easter is the reassurance that we need not be afraid of giving ourselves up in love for others, because in the end, love brings new life for all.

And chocolate. Love also frequently brings chocolate, come to think of it. I now know that Easter egg hunts are a serious labour of love, requiring planning, cleverness, and of course, self-discipline. I remember one year when I was a kid, we were hunting for Easter chocolate in our house, and we thought we were all done, and our parents kept insisting there was one chocolate still hidden. And we hunted and hunted, and we just couldn’t find it, and finally we assumed our parents were mistaken, or one of them ate it and didn’t tell the other, and we gave up.

I think about that missing chocolate on Easter because sometimes, even on Easter Sunday, I feel like I’m still hunting––not for chocolate, because I remember where I hid it all––but for new life. I love the promise of Easter––the words of Isaiah, where God says, “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth;” the words of Paul, “the last enemy to be destroyed is death;” the words of the divine beings to the grief-stricken women, “why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.” I love these words, I cling to these words, but sometimes, like the apostles, I don’t quite believe these words.

Because I watch the news, I see what’s going on in the world, I sit with people whose lives are falling apart, and I think, “about to create a new earth? Why wait?!?” I think, “we’ve been waiting two thousand years for death to be destroyed, why is it taking so long?!?” I hunt and hunt for the new life that signals an end to death forever, and I just can’t find it. Sometimes I wonder, deep-down inside, if St. Paul was mistaken, that Christians are, in fact of all people most to be pitied. If maybe we should give up.

I suspect that I’m not alone in this. I think all of us, if we’re honest with ourselves, find it difficult, if not impossible, to live our Easter hope day in and day out without faltering, perpetually holding out hope for that time when the new heavens and the new earth will finally arrive, for that day when there will be no more sound of weeping or cries of distress, for that moment when we will find that last Easter chocolate. We live, and we watch others die, in this world still. Two thousand years later and Jesus Christ is still the first, and only, to be raised from the dead.

Did you know that chocolate stays good for a really long time? A year after my sisters and I gave up on that last Easter chocolate, we were moving some stuff in the living room, and there, tucked behind the record player, was the missing treat. In the meantime, we had enjoyed the Easter goodies we did find, and had completely forgotten about it. But you know what? It hadn’t gone bad. Actually, I enjoyed it more than the ones we had found a year ago, I think because we had given up hunting for it. (I was a kid, of course I ate chocolate a year old.)

It’s true that we are still waiting for the fullness of new life for all to become a reality in this world. It is also true, though, that God gives us a taste of the goodness of new life even in our waiting. There is new life in the midst of death in this world, here and now. We just sometimes need help to see it.

For example, perhaps you remember almost a year ago when it was discovered that thousands of children had been forcefully separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border? Their parents were sent into detention, and the children, some only toddlers, were sent to shelters, with no way for the families to communicate. This past week, 27 of those families were reunited. One of those families included little 6-yr-old Ariel, whose family had been in ICE detention while he had been in a shelter for almost 10 months. He couldn’t even remember what his parents or his sister looked like. But watch––new life is here and now, maybe only in part, but still real.

If this Easter is hard for you, if the proclamation of new life seems to you “an idle tale,” and you cannot believe it, if you have moments when you want to give up hunting for that remaining Easter chocolate, when you want to give up hope, know this: Paul was not mistaken. Death will be destroyed, and God gives us tastes of that in this life. We live both in the not-yet and the now of Easter life, and the more we look for this new life, even in places of death, the more we will find it. It was not the apostles who experienced the resurrection, it was the women who went to the tomb.

And if you do not have energy right now even to look, know that the new life God has for you endures forever. It does not go bad––it lasts even longer than chocolate. This new life is, even, like our missing Easter chocolate, waiting in plain sight. Know also that you are not alone in waiting for it. This community––this living Body of Christ––is here to wait with you and to love you so that you might have life, just as Jesus has loved us. Here––as everywhere, now––as always, God is engaged in a labour of love, creating a new earth where you will be glad and rejoice forever in the new life given to you. Thanks be to God. Amen.