Easter Sunday

Pioneer Cemetery, tucked into a corner of our property,
is one of my favorite places. It's peaceful and restful up
there and one can give thought to powerful, amazing ideas
in such a place.

My regular readers will know that Sundays are special days for me. I like the quiet, lazy ways they begin and the freedom they seem to give me to meditate and relax. I especially like Easter Sunday for reasons I don’t totally understand.
by Charlie Leck

The resurrection story is a powerful, powerful account that Christians hold at the very center of their hope and faith. I personally believe that it is even more powerful when it is not held to as a literal account. Like all great mythology, the story points to powerful truths – more true, even, than the story would be if it were seen as a factual account.

The Easter story, for me, has always been a message that death has no power over me (or thee, for that matter). If death has no power – if we are free from fearing it – it also loses its control over the lives we live. Therefore, I may move on, free and joyous, in living whatever days life gives me; and at the end of this journey I shall still be free and at rest in eternal peacefulness – in the embrace of love.

Deeply convicted Christians, for hundreds and hundreds of years, have traditionally encountered each other on Easter Sunday morning with the powerful pronouncement: “The Lord is risen!”

And the traditional response to the comment is: “He has risen indeed!”

I stand before the tomb in which they had laid his body. I stare in wonder at the huge stone they had rolled before the tomb’s opening and have no doubt about the manner in which the stone was rolled away. This is the work of the most powerful force in the universe. For, you see, one can kill and conquer the mortal body; but love is never defeated and never contained.

“How was the stone rolled away, Grandpa?” My grandchildren listen in rapt awe – awe that only a child can feel. “Who rolled it away?”

“The man they killed and laid to rest there,” I try to explain, “came to show us how to love everyone and how to show compassion to all people of every kind and type. I don’t know why that is such a frightening message, but it was and always has been. They thought he was odd and they lynched him. Those who loved him and believed in him laid him reverently in that tomb and sealed it with a huge stone that only many men could move.”

“Such love,” my wee ones, “can never been contained or imprisoned. Love is more powerful than armies of hatred. Love flung the stone aside and took him from his resting place that day, to hold him forever in its embrace. We, too, shall be gathered to that loving bosom one day and we shall also rest in it throughout eternity.”

Ah, Sunday morning. It’s so peaceful and lovely here. Easter! I sit, imagining my grandchildren encircle me. We're listening to Chris Cunningham. His mellow voice sings out: “The morning comes when it’s ready; just brace yourself for a tidal wave!... The same message! ...The same words on a different shore! ...New music!  The same news in a different song!”

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