“A Fuller Joy”
John 20:1-18
If I had a magic wand and could do anything this morning—absolutely anything at all—I would create justice, peace, and harmony the world over.
The attacks on Iran would cease, and Iran’s retaliatory strikes would stop in the same moment. Russian forces would leave Ukraine, never to return. Israeli forces would leave Gaza and the West Bank, and Palestinians would finally have their own state. Soldiers fighting the poor in African countries would lay down their arms.
Oil companies would declare an end to drilling and refining and then herald their massive investment in clean, renewable energy. Drug dealers facilitating addiction and death would go home to tend acres of tulips.
Anyone thinking of shooting someone else would turn in their guns.
The current iteration of Immigration and Customs Enforcement would be abolished, and immigrants with no violent criminal record would be celebrated for all they have contributed to our country and then escorted to the citizenship office. Jews would invite their Muslim neighbors to a Passover meal. Native Americans would be given whatever they need to re-create their sacred relationships with the earth and all her creatures.
White nationalists would renounce racist hatred and lobby for federal reparations to be paid to the descendants of enslaved peoples. Trans folks would be loved for who they really are and empowered to live into their true identities.
College would be free for all who want to learn. All workers would be paid a fair wage. Democrats and MAGA Republicans would covenant together to uphold the Constitution, restore our democracy, and bring corrupt government officials to account.
Every child would live in a loving home. Every person would belong to a circle of love that just keeps getting bigger and wider and deeper. No one would go hungry. Everyone would have a roof over their head. Excellent health care would be available to all, and all the people you and I love who are living with deadly diseases would be cured. All sexual-abuse victims would be believed and beloved. Broken hearts would be mended, and anyone struggling with depression or another mental illness would know healing, wholeness, and hope.
I could go on.
And you probably could, too.
It gives me goosebumps just to imagine all that justice and peace, all those nations and corporations, movements and individuals coming together as one for the good of all. Give yourself a moment to let yourself imagine and feel what it would be like to live in the world God intended for us.
Unfortunately, we don’t have a magic wand.
Not even Easter is magic.
But while it is still dark, while every day brings us more news of the death and destruction of all we hold dear, while we totter on the brink of despair, Easter comes to remind us that we do have cause for joy and hope. Easter bathes us in life-giving light. Easter encourages us to imagine faithfully and to trust that the future will be even better than we can imagine.
Because the love of God is yet at work in this broken and beautiful world—in and through us. Because we have not only God’s promise of healing and newness, justice and joy, but also countless stories of resurrection and myriad examples of impossible things actually happening—stories of shared hope and courage triumphing over evil and cruelty, accounts of persistent and faithful love triumphing even over death.
Which is to say: We are Easter people living in a Good Friday world. By the grace of God, we can love each other into hope and courage. By the life-giving love of God, we can build communities that confront the systems that traffic in death and despair. And by the life-restoring power of God, we can bring new life, justice, and joy out of seemingly God-forsaken places.
Easter comes to show us that a new world is possible. A world of justice, peace, and joy is possible
I realize this this may sound as far-fetched as the executed Jesus, three days dead, emerging from the tomb seeming not much worse for the wear and looking, apparently, like a gardener.
But it is not.
If you’re not so sure, turn to the Easter story itself. It shows us our part in the grand resurrection project, which—spoiler alert—is 90 percent just showing up with love and hope in our hearts. It is 90 percent giving the love and power of God something—someone—to work with.
You can see it right there in the very first sentence of the story, which tells us that Mary Magdalene went to the tomb while it was still dark.
Which is to say, she showed up. Her love, her grief, and her faith brought her to the tomb, a place of deep darkness and searing pain.
The gift of darkness, the way through darkness and pain and suffering, is that it requires something of us. Think about it: When the power goes out, when the source of light and heat and water is taken away, we are forced to come up with new ways of doing things. We have to improvise. We have to check our resources to see what we already have that might be useful in this situation. We have to ask for help and come together to offer help.
When the Light appears to have gone out, when evil seems to have triumphed, that is exactly when we must refuse to give in to despair. That is when—even if we have no real plan, even if we’re following nothing more than the ache in our heart, even if we’re afraid—we must show up and set out in search of hope, justice, new life, and joy.
We have seen this so clearly in Minneapolis.
While it was still dark there, and while the cruel and deadly tactics of ICE agents made it grow darker by the day, ordinary people started showing up for their immigrant neighbors.
They formed mutual aid societies to buy and collect food and other resources, and then they formed other groups to deliver the supplies to immigrants who were afraid to leave their homes. They created a transportation system of minivans and Subarus to ferry the children of immigrants to and from school each day. With texts and whistles and car horns, they created warning systems to let people know when ICE was in the neighborhood. They created a posse of lawyers ready to file habeas corpus petitions at a moment’s notice. They created an entire movement of people ready to meet and support immigrants when they were released from detention into sub-zero temperatures in the middle of the night with no coat, no phone, and no transportation.
And they’re still going, still building community, still loving their neighbors, still working on building a better and more just world for all.
This, friends, is resurrection in practice.
And resurrection is happening all around us all the time. We often miss it because we think it is something that happens suddenly, all at once. We miss it because we think it must be a lot like fireworks: big, noisy, dramatic and disruptive.
But nature teaches us otherwise. The tulips and the butterfly teach us otherwise. Our own lives teach us otherwise.
Think about the heartbreak you thought you’d never recover from and had resigned yourself to living with forever, until you fell in love again. Think about the life-changing diagnosis or the bleak prognosis, and how all the annoying details of life fell away, revealing a new life that was nothing but love, gratitude, and sweetness. Think about how you keep going when there is more money than month. About the inner strength and fuller joy you discovered when you thought the overwhelm of caregiving would surely kill you. Think about the work you did to repair a relationship that was all but dead. Consider it a resurrection victory every day you get out of bed and carry on in spite of deep depression or numbing grief. Rejoice in resurrection every time you refuse to let your feelings of loneliness separate you from others.
And when we realize we have experienced resurrection, when we realize that only grace and love have brought us to this newness we never expected to know, we, like Mary Magdalene, can say with both joy and wonder, “I have seen the Lord!” “I have seen Love and new life!”
The Risen Christ comes to give us hope and joy, and he comes to remind us that resurrection is the work of a lifetime. If we let God’s Spirit have her way with us, we are forever letting go and becoming; we are always dying to what is harmful and false and rising to new, real, abundant life.
In the depth of the darkest night, we trust that the sun will rise—because it always has. At the height of the fiercest storm, we trust that it will end—because storms always do. And in the midst of what is perhaps the most cruel, destructive, and corrupt period in the history of our government, we must trust that the love-driven actions of good people will prevail eventually, because Easter tells us that love bats last.
Meantime, we hold on to one another and all that is good and holy and life-giving. Meantime, we stand with and for our neighbors who are being persecuted and crucified. Meantime, we keep tilling the soil and planting all manner of goodness. Meantime, we keep the faith. Meantime, we keep loving with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.
“Somewhere right now,” while it is still dark, “a seed is splitting open underground, . . . pushing toward the light.” Somewhere right now, in the dark, an addict is staying sober for one more day. Somewhere right now, while it is still dark, a baby is being born, reminding us that the world must go on. Somewhere right now, even in this darkness, someone is resisting evil and discovering an inner strength they didn’t know they had.
Somewhere right now, a neighbor is welcoming a stranger. Somewhere right now, while it is still dark, someone is walking away from the power that oppresses and seeking both forgiveness and a new path.
“Where there is great love,” said the author Willa Cather, “there are always miracles.”
Where there is great love, beloveds, there is resurrection and a fuller, deeper joy. May we all keep showing up to love it into being.
