Easter Sunday
Acts 10:34a, 37-43 | Colossians 3:1-4 | John 20:1-9

Oh God, who on this day, through your Only Begotten Son, have conquered death and unlocked for us the path to eternity, grant, we pray, that we who keep the solemnity of the Lord’s resurrection may, through the renewal brought by your Spirit, rise up in the light of life.  Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.

What did Jesus do on the cross?  Why did he have to die, and why was his death so important to the human race?  It’s clear that one of the things that Jesus did was to expose evil for what it is and show it, in its true light, as something that has to destroy that which gives life.  Jesus is life.  He is the light of the world.  He is the way we’re supposed to live, and yet evil that existed in the world, in a way that was more powerful than human beings, had done its work to separate people, isolate people, put people at odds with other people.  Evil has one single intention: to destroy the plan of God.  And what is that plan for you and for me that’s revealed in this death and resurrection is he wants more than anything else for us to be empowered in a way that evil no longer can have power over us.  Evil is stronger than human beings, but God is stronger than evil.  And until the death and resurrection of Jesus, that strength wasn’t shared with human beings as it is now.  

Since the death and resurrection of Jesus, we have been empowered.  And how does it work?  Well, I don’t think it’s hard for us to look at the world today and say, “There are things going on that seem so destructive and wrong, people using their power to take away freedom from other people, people hating each other because they think differently, wanting to attack each other because they think their way is the only way.”  It’s all showing some kind of really negative energy that has got to be destroyed, and I say that by wanting to say so clearly, it has been destroyed.  And so what’s the name we give to it?  And it seems so simple, because 90 percent of what Jesus taught throughout his whole life was on one theme: forgiveness, being in a state of mind, a state of our hearts where we want nothing more than reconciliation.  We don’t want to have revenge or retaliation or destruction any longer.  We want unity and oneness, and that is a promise that God has placed in our hearts.  But unless we believe it’s there, unless we want it to be there, we limit its power.  Forgiveness is a way of life.  It is recognizing something that has been promised by God that he is stronger than anything else that would be a source of destruction.  And when you watch people destroying each other or trying to destroy each other, when you feel that that is the way things really are if we would give that power to the enemy ⎯ Judas is a very interesting player in the whole Easter story.  The word to betray is to give someone ⎯ to give in to the enemy, and Judas is a real interesting figure, because you look at him, and one of the things that he was caught up in is lying about who he is.  He posed as the caretaker of the money, and yet he was not doing that.  He was sucking things out for himself, and he was caught in evil.  When Jesus gave him communion at the Lord’s Supper, Satan entered into him, and what did Satan do to him when he entered into him fully?  The only thing that happened that we can see so clearly is that he went ⎯ Judas went and hanged himself.  It is an attitude that, when we’re in it, it ultimately seeks to destroy.  To name that darkness, to name it is so important, and to name it and then to know what the way out of it is, and it’s so simple.  Don’t become like the enemy.  If the enemy wants to destroy you, then you want to destroy the enemy, and when you try to destroy evil, it backfires.  When you try to destroy another person, because they’re not who you want them to be, separate from them, reject them, we’re playing into the game.  

The opening prayer of this liturgy so clearly said there’s something that needs to be unlocked, and Jesus unlocked it on the cross.  He gave in to evil, not that he said it was good or that it was right.  He just gave in to it in the sense that he refused to be like evil itself.  He did not retaliate.  He did not want to destroy those people destroying him.  He loved them.  He forgave them.  He stayed one with them, and in that process, he infused life into them.  We can infuse light and life into our enemies if we choose not to retaliate against them or not to want them to be destroyed but want them to be transformed.  What a gift, a gift that seems oversimplified in some ways, but then in other ways, it is so powerful.  Stop resentment.  Stop hating.  Learn to accept, and learn to love, and learn to bring life and light.  That’s the mystery of Easter.

Father, we give you thanks for our redemption.  We don’t fully understand it.  It’s hard to grasp, but I know somehow that the power of evil that you’ve allowed to be part of our life is no longer able to overcome us.  And we have within us the power and the strength to use it for good, to learn and to grow and not to become what it is.  You’ve saved us from a life of destruction and drawn us into a life of great goodness.  Bless us with that awareness that we can live it every day of our lives, and we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.