April 6, 2024 – 2nd Sunday of Easter

A week ago, we celebrated the resurrection. But there comes a time when we must live the resurrection. That is not always easy. There are days when we prefer to just stay in bed, pull the covers over our head, and close out the world. Some days it seems far easier and safer to lock the doors of our house and avoid the circumstances and people of our lives. Sometimes we just want to run away, hide, and not deal with the reality of our lives.

But, for just a moment, stop thinking about the Easter story as something someone thought to be true. Instead, consider it as a parable.

In this parable, our protagonist spends his life confronting those who abuse their power and step on the least of these; he confronts The Powers That Be. The Powers That Be decide they need to squish him out. They kill him. Bury him. They believe they are once and for all done with him.

But they are not.

He returns. He goes to his friends and tells them to spread the Good News to all the Earth. Some of them believe because they were there. But others weren’t present, and their faith requires them to see to believe. He believes that doubt is an inherent part of faith and returns so that those who need proof may see and believe. They go and spread the Good News.

Taken as a parable, the Good News they spread to all the Earth would be this: with love there are no endings, only new beginnings. In fact, all of God’s creation is wired for new beginnings. The Powers That Be sought to end him, but they could not. As a matter of fact, those particular Powers That Be have long since fallen, but the movement of Love that was reborn on that first Easter continues on to this day.

And that’s the moral to this story: The Powers That Be are always, ultimately, ended by loving, non-violent resistance. When there is love, endings are nothing more than new beginnings. The story of the Resurrection is that fear and hate and grief do not win… love does. Just like his disciples in that locked room we hear about today, Jesus gives us his peace, his breath, his life, and then sends us out. We are free to unlock the doors of our lives and step outside to share his message with the world.

Put simply, the moral of the Easter story is this: love wins.