Pastor’s Corner: (Not) Back to Normal

April 4, 2018

From my perspective, with Lent over and Easter Sunday past, the Church can go “back to normal.” It’s the occasion to resume the routine, continue the customary, and sustain the status quo.

Which is a very wrong perspective.

Easter, I keep reminding myself (as I sigh with relief that the “extras” of Lent are over), is the Great Shake-Up of the World. It overturns the routine. It defies custom. It overwhelms the status quo.

“You want ordinary life?” shouts Easter: “Don’t you wish you may have it! No ordinary life for you:

“You get new life!”

The great powers of the world, like Rome, or Washington, or Moscow? They can be disregarded, if not ignored. All the power they can apply fades to nothing against Easter.

The dominant belief systems of the world, like “might makes right,” and “me and mine first,” and “good people finish last”? They fall as well before Easter, where sacrifice triumphs, and the givers come first, and goodness arises.

Poverty? Oppression? Death itself? Sorry: You get to pass away, too. Easter is here, and whatever power you held is gone.

I gave up hamburgers for Lent. For Easter, we will all have to give up what’s ordinary.

In Easter, God has given us greatness.

With aloha,

Pastor Eric