Light Up the World

Beloved in Christ, 

Alleluia, Christ is risen! 

It was my delight and exceeding joy to see so many wonderful pictures of our collective Easter celebrations over the weekend. My own observance was so greatly enriched by the breadth of our diverse and beautiful diocese that was on display Sunday afternoon and Monday, and to feel the deep unity given to us in and through our risen Lord. It did not hurt that those celebrations unfolded under what for a lot of Minnesota was the first warm weather of the year. 

This is my annual reminder that Easter is not confined to a single Sunday, but continues for a full fifty days. So find a way to celebrate every single day. Really. We generally accept the idea that Lent’s penitential tones extend over several weeks, but we are not as quick to carry on with Easter triumph and Easter joy. 

In Matthew’s telling of the Easter story, there is an earthquake when the two Marys arrive at the tomb. The earth quakes because the very foundations of how we think the world works are being shaken and upended by the tomb that stands inexplicably empty. The resurrection they encounter is every bit as real as the bitter death they and we know so well. 

But Jesus isn’t simply the beneficiary of a divine form of CPR that resuscitates him to what he already was. He is the first fruits of an unimaginable new kind of life, one that is fully animated by God’s perfect power of love. If Easter seems incredible and unbelievable to you, it’s because it is. And that is precisely why it is good news. Easter signals the promise of a life and a world that are beyond our capacity to imagine, a world where perfect love and justice are fully done, and where the pains that assault us over and over no longer have any hold. 

That mystery and that joy cannot be known in one Sunday morning. It has to be kneaded into our bodies and souls over time. So for the love of God, find some way, every day, to celebrate, to rejoice, to party so that even in the midst of a world that is dark and hard, God’s true joy might radiate from us, and draw this whole hard world more closely into God’s loving embrace. 

Happy Easter to you, beloved. Let’s go light up the world with joy and love, until the whole cosmos is enfolded into God’s perfect reign of peace. 

The Right Reverend Craig Loya
X Bishop