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The long dark
descent into Holy Week has given way to the joyous
awakening of Easter. Alleluia, Christ has risen.
The Lord has risen indeed, Alleluia. At the Easter
vigil a cacophony of bells greeted the return of
the light of Christ. Easter Day, an abundance of
flowers and sacred music at its most glorious
heralded the new day. Churches throughout
Christendom were packed to overflowing, their
numbers enhanced by those who attend rarely except
for special days such as Easter. What a spirited
celebration!
Very quickly we
moved from the depths of despair developed through
Lent and Holy Week to a buoyant, celebratory
spirit. The celebration is appropriate, important,
and wonderful. But we also cannot let it erase the
memory of the darkness that led to the
celebration. It is healthy to keep in mind that
this is not a romanticized story that happened in
a book with a happy ending. Rather, someone died
for us. Someone died for you. And not just
someone, but the son of God. And yes, there is a
happy ending, but one bought at a dear price.
The tendency to
romanticize the story and quickly embrace the
flowers and celebration perhaps stem from our very
human approach to trying to fill the God sized
hole within our spirits. Each of us has a deep
yearning for a relationship with our Creator.
However, the way in which we learn within our
culture to fill any yearning is with a consumerist
approach that tends towards the flashy and the
comfortable. This leads us to missing the reality
of the sacredness of the gift with which we've
been so abundantly graced. God’s son died on the
cross that we might have life.
What next? Where do
we go following the grand celebration of Easter?
What can we do with our lives that would be an
appropriate response? Perhaps part of our
challenge in filling that God shaped hole is the
way in which we interact with God’s creation. We
may be pretty good at prayer and worship, but then
get challenged when we, in the words of the
dismissal from the Eucharist, “go forth into the
world rejoicing in the power of the Spirit.” When
we step outside of the church door, we are quickly
engulfed by the spirit of the secular world, which
is frequently not in harmony with the Holy Spirit.
Yet that world
outside the church doors is the one which we are
called to love as God’s creation with the
intensity with which we share and reflect on the
love of Christ within the four church walls. God
spoke all of creation into being. On each of the
days of creation recalled in Genesis, God said
“let there be….” and something more was called
into creation. And God saw that it was good. The
busyness that we experience within our lives, the
multitude of tasks that tend to occupy our
attention, cause us to take for granted the
abundance and the sacredness that surrounds us.
All of creation is the sacred workmanship of God,
created to carry out his purposes. Likewise we are
his workmanship, “For we are what he has made us,
created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God
prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” (Eph.
2:10) He created humankind and then commanded that
we “fill the earth and subdue it…;” (Gen 1:28)
that we be the stewards of his wondrous creation.
While none of us
will likely ever completely fill our God shaped
holes until we go to our final reward, we can
certainly fill part of the void by exercising the
stewardship of all creation to which God called us
at the very beginning of creation. We do this
first by remaining aware that all that exists does
so at God’s command and in response to his loving
word. And, secondly, by treating every person and
every created thing as though God had walked up to
us and handed it to us personally. Actually, he
did. |
