April 4: Easter Sunday

Reading I: Acts 10:34a, 37-43
Responsorial Psalm: 118:1-2, 16-17, 22-23
Reading II: Colossians 3:1-4 or 1 Cor 5:6b-8
Gospel: John 20:1-9 or Matthew 28:1-10
or Luke 24:13-35

Theo, on his 17th birthday, died in a car crash on Good Friday about 22 years ago. His family and the whole faith community at St Anne’s, Palmyra was overwhelmed with grief when they heard, “Theo’s family donated his life-saving organs; 30 people live!” That Easter Sunday there was an audible sigh; the whole parish seemed to breathe with a new understanding of Easter. Theo’s name is Greek for God. I know you find all this hard to believe but it is true. Theo died on Good Friday and rose in 30 people on Easter Sunday. God died on Good Friday and rose on Easter bringing new life to a world in need of new life.

About 14 years later our precious 24-year-old son died in a ski accident. Blair was on life support. We stood in hospital barely able to breathe when his mother said, “We are donating his organs.” Like 14 years before, I involuntarily uttered an audible sigh of recognition: his death brings new life. Such realization somehow comforts us, ever so slightly.

New life.

If there is anything the world needs right now it is new life, Jesus, fully alive, in our midst. And the thing is – he is. We do not see him in this pandemic, in the loss of lives, in the loss of jobs, in the loss of innocence but he is present. Yes, I said, loss of innocence. Until COVID-19 shut down much travel we innocently tolerated foul air over Los Angeles. Then we awakened to something new! Los Angeles, Beijing, and New Delhi breathed clean air for the first time in many years as pollution decreased. Are we still innocent when we allow bailouts for oil companies? Or might we gradually let fossil fuels remain in the earth while we support retraining willing workers in renewable, sustainable, clean energy and clean-ups after massive oil leaks and spills all over the world?

All is new with Jesus’ resurrection. What seemed impossible is possible. When the air is clean we recognize the difference. We can do something to maintain Angeleno’s right to breathe. We will protect our grandchildren’s need to breathe.

Today we hear Paul urging the Corinthians to quit their unethical behavior, their “malice and wickedness” and create a “fresh” new way of living in “sincerity and truth.” He is speaking to us as we discern new ways to help one another breathe and thrive.

We innocently allowed other hazards. We may have had no idea of the disparity in high-quality health care between white people and many communities of black and brown people. Some of us did not realize how many neighborhoods, home to black and brown people, lacked sources of nutritious fresh fruits and veggies. Nor did we realize chemical treatment plants were built in those very same neighborhoods. Who knew some “essential” workers do not receive a living wage? Home health aides, for instance. When we don’t earn enough to pay for housing and food we sleep in our old junker car or overcrowd our home with renters. Health hazards render us susceptible to asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and COVID -19. Jesus is in our midst showing us humanity’s need for new systems of health care, for wages that cover basic necessities, and all manner of ways each of us can nurture good health. All are ways Jesus is healing through us.

Today’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostles has Peter reminding new converts of Jesus’s life and death and resurrection. “He (Jesus) went about doing good and healing ….” And now he heals in and through each one of us. We are “the witnesses chosen by God” commissioned like Mary of Magdala “to preach to the people” more by our actions than our words that Jesus is risen and lives anew, making all things new.

Jesus, risen from the dead takes on new meaning as we no longer let hope stay buried. Please read John 20: 1-18. Imagine seeing the gaping hole where the stone had guarded the entrance to the tomb. Imagine the gaping emptiness of that tomb. Imagine weeping with grief and confusion, unable to see through your tears. Imagine searching for Jesus and weeping; imagine life without him. Mary was grief-stricken and blind to his presence. She was out of her wits with fear. Imagine how you would feel if you were there. Imagine hearing him call your name.

Jesus stands in the garden calling each of us by name. Jesus enters into the brokenness of our situation and knows we feel inadequate to share in his healing work but who are we to place limits on what he can do in and through us and our communities? Can we accept this new life in the midst of the many losses COVID has brought? Our old lives feel as empty as the tomb ‘til he fills our lives with new life. It is not Good Friday forever but it IS EASTER forever! He says our name. He sends us to tell others, maybe not with words but, with our loving actions. Christ’s resurrection shows us that love is always stronger than fear or illness or ignorance or hate or even death.

~Deni Mack, DMin., Pastoral Associate Emerita