Swept Up in the Crazy of Easter

Beloved in Christ,

If you find Easter almost impossible to believe, you’re probably doing it right. The foundation of our faith is that a poor rabbi from the middle of nowhere was executed by the most powerful empire on earth as a common criminal, and that God physically raised him from cold hard death in a body that was very real, yet beyond our capacity to understand or imagine. Not only that, but this Risen Christ is not just a neat trick but the first fruits, the preview, of what God has promised for each and every human being, and indeed, the whole creation. The classic Christian hope is that Easter is simply a glimpse of God’s full intent: the resurrection of the dead and the re-creation of the heavens and the earth. It’s crazy.

Our scripture readings throughout this season show us that Easter has to be unpacked, wrestled with, lived into, and that it takes time to fully grasp and be grasped by it. Mary Magdalene and the disciples on the road to Emmaus don’t recognize Jesus at first. He can touch and be touched. He can eat. His body bears his wounds. He can pass through locked doors. Easter isn’t simply a doctrine we believe, or an event we remember. Easter is a mindset, a disposition, a way of life. Easter is learning to live with the expectation that God really will show up and do the impossible. 

I’ve invited the whole diocese to dive deeply into the Book of Acts during these fifty days. Acts tells the story of the first followers of Jesus, who had been utterly gripped by the impossible promise of Easter, figuring out what it means to live as an Easter people in the world. It shows them figuring it out as they go. It shows them encountering, over and over and over, God’s capacity to show up and do the unimaginable. It shows their lives being utterly swept up in that unstoppable river of life and love. It shows them living as a preview of God’s promise for the world. 

My great hope for you, for me, and for us as a diocese in the weeks to come, is that the domesticating doors we’ve placed around Easter to make it more palatable will be ripped off their hinges, and that the full power of Easter’s crazy will flood into our faith communities, our homes, and our hearts. My great hope is that this will be a season of revival and renewal, that we, too, might be fully swept up in the crazy power of God’s Spirit, and blown into a hurting world as evidence of God’s outrageous promises. 

Grace and Peace,

The Right Reverend Craig Loya