From Pastor Eric’s Study - May 2025
Christ has Risen! This proclamation might continue to ring in our ears for some weeks as we continue in this season of Easter. This year I was delighted to receive “Christ has Risen” on Saturday from Berit in New Zealand and the Walkers in Korea, what a delight to begin hearing that announcement ring out around the world a day ahead of us. This is a time when we keep thinking about how the story of Jesus' resurrection is relevant in our lives today. Easter is a celebration of hope, of new life, and the power of love, the affirmation of how non-violence triumphed over fear and the addiction to power and bullying-violence that fueled it. In Jesus’ day it was the triumph of God over the ways of the Roman Empire and their oppression of those who didn’t support them. Easter is the proclamation that choosing the power of love over the love of power actually works. Our story sometimes feels like a fairy tale. Still, the Easter proclamation is a power that sustains us profoundly on life’s journey.
In this hemisphere it always feels like creation is joining in the Easter proclamation as crocus blossoms fill the front yard and daffodils and lilies begin pushing up. This year, with Easter arriving so late, the weather and sun’s lengthening days all reinforce the feeling that creation is sharing in the glorious witness. This year those thoughts were given pause while talking with Berit in the southern hemisphere. I’m reminded that not all people get to see the same signs around them. Down-under, the days are shortening and fall is unfolding. It makes me wonder how churches decorate for Easter, or think about all of creation joining in the exultation. It is a clear reminder that our Easter promise isn’t rooted in external realities but rather, in an unseen promise of a love of God that will not end.
Last week we finished a four-part series on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The last session spoke of how his faith sustained him as he was imprisoned by the Nazis for having been involved in underground operations trying to smuggle Jews to safety. He was imprisoned for trying to live his faith. From prison he wrote: “I believe that God can and will bring good out of evil, even out of the greatest evil. For that purpose he needs men who make the best use of everything. I believe that God will give us all the strength we need to help us to resist in all time of distress. But he never gives it in advance, lest we should rely on ourselves and not on him alone.” Bonhoeffer spoke of a depth and humility of faith that can too easily get lost in a world that abuses faith for political ends instead of relying on it as the strength to live God's kingdom ways.
In our study we also encountered a quote from Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl who wrote: “the last of the human freedom – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way … Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him – mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp.
Our world is not always crocuses and daffodils and lengthening days. Lots of times the world feels dark and fearful, broken and exhausting. And Easter’s proclamation bursts into that world even more vigorously. Love is the answer. The selfless, humble way of Jesus wins over and over again.
The proclamation of Easter isn’t dependent on external forces of seasons or proclamations. It is the transformative love of God that we are invited to proclaim with the fullness of our beings. We are directed to live out the command of Maundy Thursday, to love one another as Jesus loves us. The resurrection is the proclamation of a grace for all - without cost, without prejudice, or division, dehumanizing or the diminishing of another. The resurrection promises power to Jesus’ demand to love one another. The cost of that radical, extravagant love was death. But the story of God in which we find hope to be bold, is that He has indeed Risen! That is the victory of Jesus way over the ways of the empire and a broken world. May we choose that freedom and that proclamation.