Easter's Disruptive Invitation

Beloved in Christ,

In Matthew’s gospel, Easter arrives as an earthquake. Two women who had been following Jesus arrive at the tomb a few days after they watched their friend brutalized and executed by the oppressive occupying empire. They don’t appear to be expecting anything other than Jesus’ dead body. When they arrive, the earth shakes, an angel tears through the veil separating heaven and earth, the guards central to Rome’s campaign of terror drop at the sight, and the angel announces that everything has changed. 

Before anything else, Easter disrupts and destabilizes. It signals that the crushing boulders in our world and our lives that seem so fixed can be moved. The persistence of evil in the world depends on our accepting the massive injustices, the painful poverty, the bitter divisions as inevitable and unavoidable. Easter promises that things will be different. Easter promises that God’s power can blast through every hard thing that seems unavoidable, that it can render powerless death itself. Easter promises that we do not need to fear even the worst our world can be or can do, and that sets us free to be people of disruptive hope and revolutionary love. 

Easter’s invitation is to expect an earthquake. Easter’s command is to join the disruption. Living in the light of Easter means going out into what is still a hard, fearful, and violent world and expecting God to show up with an earthquake of loving kindness. Living in the light of Easter means taking every action, making every decision, meeting  every moment with the sure and certain hope that nothing is so far gone it cannot be saved, no one is so lost they cannot be found, and nothing is so dead that God’s power won’t raise it to new and glorious life. 

Grace and Peace, 

The Right Rev. Craig Loya