We are an Easter people, moving through a Good Friday world.
—Barbara Harris, Hallelujah, Anyhow!
Episcopal Bishop Barbara Harris (1930–2020) explores how we can celebrate Easter, even in the midst of difficult “Good Friday” circumstances:
The world is full of the misery and pain of Good Friday. We only have to open our daily newspapers, turn on the television to the nightly news … for fresh reminders of the violence, cruelty, want, and need that permeates our world. We have only to examine and reflect on our own lives, our own trials and tribulations, our own cares and woes. We have only to consider how we relate to each other and to our world neighbors. But we are Easter people, and we are supposed to be different.
There are some distinctive characteristics about Easter people that keep us in close touch with this Jesus who says to a grieving Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die” [John 11:25–26].
Easter people are believers. We believe not only in the possible, we believe also in the impossible. We believe that the lame were made to walk, and the mute made to speak, that lepers were cleansed and the blind received their sight…. We can believe also that with the helpful presence of God’s Holy Spirit, we are strengthened and sustained on our earthly pilgrimage. Further, we can believe that we can fashion new lives committed to love, to peace, to justice, and to liberation for all of God’s people.
Easter people grieve and need to be comforted. And, yes, Easter people get angry … but we must seek to channel that anger in constructive ways. Be angry enough to say and to seriously mean, I will commit my life to living out the Baptismal Covenant: seeking and serving Christ in all persons, loving my neighbor as myself, striving for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being.
Easter people hang in until the end. Like the women who stood by the cross, Easter people live by the words of the old spiritual: “I will go, I shall go to see what the end will be.” [1]
Benedictine nun and poet Mary Lou Kownacki (1941–2023) embraces this resurrection wisdom:
Easter grabs us by the throat and shouts, “Live.” The radiant Jesus who leaves the tomb challenges our complacency with the forces of death, be they hopelessness, fear, discouragement, or lack of will. Don’t let death have the last word in your story, Jesus urges. None of us has the right to sleep in death. Even if there is no angel to help you, grab the door of the tomb that holds you back and rip its seal. There’s too much goodness in you that still needs to rise, and there’s too much work in the world that still needs to be done. [2]
References:
[1] Barbara Clementine Harris, “Easter Grace in a Good Friday World,” in Parting Words: A Farewell Discourse (Cowley Publications, 2003), 69–70, 71–72.
[2] Mary Lou Kownacki, Everyday Sacred, Everywhere Beauty: Readings from an Old Monk’s Journal, ed. Anne McCarthy et al. (Orbis, 2024), 112–113.
Image credit and inspiration: Krista Joy Montgomery, Unknown (detail), 2019, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. We carefully tend the blooms of bright resurrection after the pain of our Good Fridays.
Story from Our Community:
I have been surprised and amazed at my new understanding of Lent this year. I always jumped to the joy of Easter without truly experiencing the wilderness and suffering of Lent. Events like the COVID epidemic and other times of isolation have revealed to me the deep spiritual growth that can come from solitude, silence, and emotional wilderness.
—Margaret C.
