Easter, 2020

You know, there weren’t any lilies at the first Easter. There weren’t loud, joyous hymns, or big celebrations or dinners or large gatherings. There were the eleven disciples, huddled together inside, afraid of going out. All the followers of Jesus stayed in. Only the essential workers, the women, who had to go and take care of Jesus’ body, dared to go out into the world. On the first Easter, everyone was afraid. Everyone was mourning. The good world that they thought Jesus was going to bring was gone. It wasn’t a possibility anymore. And now, even their normal life had been taken from them. They were stuck, and they were frightened. They felt lost and abandoned.

I imagine many of us have felt like the disciples on that first Easter morning over the past few weeks.

But maybe they weren’t all feeling so lost and alone and frightened. Maybe they were past that. I don’t mean that they had gotten over what had happened to them. I mean, maybe they were numb. Maybe they couldn’t feel much of anything at all. That happens when you go through trauma. When events around you are too much, you just shut down. You do what you have to do. And so maybe the women, going to the tomb to do the grim task they had to do, weren’t nervous. Maybe they were just carrying on, because that was all they could do.

I imagine some of us can relate to that too.

Sometimes, when we talk about the disciples, we talk about them as those who mourn without any hope. We think that we know something they don’t know, that we have hope that they can’t have, because we know that Jesus is actually risen. But I don’t know that that’s completely true. They had promises like the one I read from Jeremiah, promises that no matter how bad things got, one day, there would be celebrating again, promises that God loves them with an everlasting love and that God would build them back up. They knew these promises. They knew that they had reason to hope that one day, things would be better. And still, they walked numb on the Jerusalem road to the tomb.

Sometimes, our circumstances eclipse our hope.

And that’s okay. That’s human. That’s normal. If hope is hard to find right now, you’re not alone. If you’re stuck on the Jerusalem Road, you’re not the only one. Many of us are here, standing six feet apart and wearing cloth masks. We’re doing what we have to do, whether or not we want to do it. And we have no idea what lies ahead.

We have no idea how long we’re going to need to stay home, how long this virus is going keep our essential workers working around the clock. We have no idea what the future looks like, which jobs will come back and which jobs are gone forever. We don’t know when our children will be able to go back to school safely. We don’t yet know how much we’re going to lose. We are headed toward the peak of this virus in a few weeks. We’re walking on the road toward the tomb.

And yet.

Even in the midst of all we don’t know, there is one thing we do know.

There will be a resurrection. There will be new life after all this is over. We know that we follow the living God, a God who is active in this world even now, strengthening those who are working to restore and rebuild this world. We follow a God who loves us with an everlasting love, who promises us that there will be celebrating again, who meets us at the tomb and says, “Do not be afraid!” Death has been defeated, if it doesn’t feel like it yet. There will be an end to pain and suffering, even if it doesn’t feel like it yet. We will, one day, be free to live life and life abundant through Jesus Christ our Lord. We will go from Jerusalem to Galilee. We will leave this place of fear and loss and hurt and mourning and return to the place where we first realized that life might be different. And best of all, Jesus meets us there. Jesus will be with us in whatever new life comes after this time.

This is not the Easter we wanted. I know that. But friends, I also know that when we are finally able to gather together again, and we will be able to gather together again, there will be rejoicing. There will be feasting and dancing. What a day that will be!

And for now, we walk the Jerusalem Road, headed toward the tomb, praying that we will find grace in the wilderness, just as Jeremiah promised. We allow ourselves to feel how we feel, whether that’s upset or afraid, angry or overwhelmed, or just sad, and we remind each other that we do have hope, whether we feel it or not. We know that we are never outside of God’s love and we know that God’s love never fails. Even though we haven’t seen the resurrection in our lives yet, we know it’s coming. We know it’s coming because Jesus is already risen. He is risen indeed!

Amen.