(continued from p.15)
A Needed Message
Is that not the message of Easter? When on a hill framed by three crosses mankind concluded that it was done. When a body was taken down from a cross, wrapped and placed in the finality of a tomb. When the grand spectacle was over and everybody went home to the regularity and routine of their sluggish lives. When everyone thought nothing to be different and that hope was now sealed in history. Everyone determined a beginning as a conclusion. With the lesson of Easter apparently yet unlearned, mankind has far too often carried that suffocating pattern of behavior right into the present leaving our lives and our culture littered with graves filled with things yet very much alive.
Easter begs us to refrain from killing life before its dead. Easter declares that our notions of conclusions are nothing more than indicators of beginnings. Easter invites us to believe that what is done is often only done because we have deemed it so, and that such a judgement does not possess the power to actually make it so. Easter is a promise that there is always something that follows the darkest night, the most desolate moment, the most detestable actions, and the most searing pain. Easter is about conclusions being the very beginnings that we are in such desperate need of. Easter asks that we quit burying that which is not dead out of the fear of how glorious life might actually be if we let it live. That is both the promise and invitation of Easter!
16