April 2016 Newsletter
Posted on April 1, 2016 by spiritofjoy No comments
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Death has been swallowed up in victory.
Where, O death is your victory?
Where, O death is your sting?
—1 Corinthians 15:54b-55
Spirit of Joy had just finished celebrating the Resurrection of Our Lord for the third time on Sunday. It was a joyous morning, filled with Good News and great music in a flower-adorned sanctuary. The ringing declarations by worshipers that, “Christ has risen! He has risen indeed! Alleluia!” still echoed after the last worshiper went home.
Our family enjoyed a delicious Easter brunch at our table, and then it was time for me to get horizontal on the couch for the Easter afternoon nap. I checked my phone for updated weather and news reports—and that’s when I saw the story of the bombing in Lahore, Pakistan targeting scores of Christian families celebrating Easter at an outdoor park. These sisters and brothers, many of them children, had just celebrated what we celebrated: the victory of God in Christ over death. Clearly death was still fighting back.
My answer to St. Paul’s rhetorical questions asked of the Corinthians is that the sting of death is still felt all over the place: in the previous bombings in Brussels during Holy Week; in the home of the spouse who celebrated this Easter without his beloved for the first time in decades; in hospice care where inevitable death cannot be denied; in the news that a beloved relative or friend has breathed his last; and certainly in that park in Pakistan where joy turned to horrifying sorrow.
Anxiety, fear, and death still have the loudest word in this twenty-first century. But Jesus followers continue to declare that death will not have the last word. We make this declaration, not with naïve optimism that is blind to suffering and death, because the cross is part of our story too.
We know what it’s like to live separated from any sense of God. We proclaim with Paul that “death has been swallowed up in victory,” even as it still stings, because Jesus was raised from the dead. We trust that God’s Will and not ours will be done as we pray regularly for it to be so. Easter reminds us that God’s Gracious Will is that Love is the victor, death is not the end, and Life will have the last word. Christ our Lord has risen. May His rising heal death’s sting in your life this Easter. JE