“The word Easter is shorthand for God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. That simple incredible claim is the center of our Christian hope. It’s the center because it reminds us who God is, who we are and that God’s future will prevail despite every refusal and rebellion.
“Easter brings to the front of our mind and the center of our heart that, only God is God. God is the forever center that holds. Easter reminds us dramatically that when it’s God’s will, you can betray it, arrest it, whip it, spit on it, push nails in it, hang it on a tree until it dies and bury it underground and still, shockingly, God will defiantly resuscitate it.
“I have always wished that the Gospel writers would have interviewed Pontius Pilate after the Resurrection with a two-word question, now what? The center holds because love is the most durable substance in the world. And, God’s way to reveal the center, the real center, is to dismantle by love and with love everything that is not love. Now that’s power! True power! God is love. And since love-power is energy, it generates energy. We call that energy hope. And since, everything but love ultimately is frail and failed, we are right to hope in God. So we apply God’s words and ways to our real lives now in hope, now, in the midst of a racial reckoning, a viral pandemic and an epidemic of gun violence. But what
“I like most about Easter is that it proves that hope in God isn’t some pristine fairy tale. No, Easter is a word for the real world: For an institution renouncing its racist founding; for a nurse who leaves the safety of her home each day to care for the infected; and for the newlywed in Boulder Colorado who runs toward an active shooter to care for strangers. When asked why he did such a ridiculous thing, he answered, “God compelled me.” Christ has died and Christ is risen, that is our center and what Easter teaches is us is that the center holds.”
Bishop Rob Wright
Diocese of Atlanta