Greetings, friends, as we prepare to experience Easter Joy once again.
Today we will gather around a table to remember Jesus’ last supper with his disciples. Whether we are with others in person or virtually, we will recall the night Jesus gathered in the upper room and washed the feet of his disciples. We, too, will take the bread and cup and be nourished by the spiritual food Christ offers us and be made one through the meal.
And we will recall the new, the final commandment Jesus gave, when he turned to them and said, I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."
But then, the world is turned upside down by hate and death as Jesus is arrested, tried, convicted, scorned, nailed to a cross and buried in a tomb.
Love one another, just as I have loved you, you should also love one another.
In the space between Maundy Thursday and Easter morning it feels as if love has lost. Love seems to have no strength in the face of the powers and principalities that be. And the disciples, the ones whose love should be shining bright, turn from love, turn from Jesus himself, running to protect themselves and even denying they knew him.
I look at our world and in my weakest moments I wonder if love is enough. I look at the heavy cost of racism on siblings of color and I ask myself, where is the love? I see people walking around without masks while a virus still rages and I ask myself, where is the love?
I see children living in poverty and I ask myself, where is the love? I see people alienated, ostracized from their families because of who they are, what they’ve done, what they do, who they love, and I ask myself, where is the love?
How are you making your love visible? Can people tell by the love that you share that you are a follower of Jesus?
Where is the love?
Sometimes it feels as if we have gotten stuck in Holy Saturday’s shadows. The silence too loud to bear, the void too empty, the despair too great. We break our solidarity with one another and with God. All that escapes from us are sighs too deep for words.
Thank God that God doesn’t leave us there. For Easter is coming. The women will come to the tomb and find it empty. Love’s redeeming work is done as death no longer has the final say.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
As Easter morning dawns, may you discover God’s resurrection power which busts us all from our tombs of despair, of violence, of hate to reach for love, which makes all things new. May the many places of death in our lives and world be overcome by Love’s power. May our relationships, our communities, our homes, be infused with this love in which God invites us to participate in life together.
As you view the empty tomb, may you see the living Christ all around you: in the phone call from a friend, in the child who reaches for your hand, in the one who asks for small change at an intersection, in the tear-stained face of one who has felt the sting of racism.
And then may we all soar where Christ has led, following our exalted head, to make Love the visible testimony of our commitment to Jesus as we seek to do the work he began.
May you have a joyous experience of Easter this year!
With love,
Bishop Karen
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