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In my search for a new angle, I found myself looking back over my more than twenty Easters at St. James and one thing became clear: it’s a rare Easter that isn’t celebrated in the midst of some kind of life and death struggle. The Easter of 1990 came as the Iron Curtain was collapsing and it was hard not to see that great moment as something of a contemporary Exodus – a ‘Passover’ from death to life – for as millions of people in Eastern Europe who shook off their shackles and got their first taste of freedom. Then there was the Easter of 1994. Some of you will remember it as the day we celebrated the last Mass in the Cathedral before closing it for nine long months of renovation. For some, there was a kind of death that Easter, even if there was also the promise of new life. The Easter of 2001 was a death and life moment for me personally because I was fully expecting to lose a dear friend, a brother priest, to a virulent form of cancer. Today, thank God, he is celebrating Easter with his parishioners! Easter of 2002 saw us still reeling from the terrible events of 9/11, searching for life and hope in the wake of an experience of death on an unprecedented scale. Easter of 2003 came only weeks after the outbreak of the Iraq war, and only weeks after my mother died. And now there’s this Easter of 2009 when our nation – not to mention our world – teeters on the brink of near economic collapse. A death experience, for many, especially for the poor, and we all find ourselves wondering where -- and if -- life is to be found in the shambles and shattered dreams of a failed economic system – in the wholesale wreckage brought about mostly by unbridled human greed. Death and life. Life and death. They are the pattern of our existence, tightly woven into the fabric of all that we know. And were it not for Easter, we would have good reason to view them rather cynically because when it comes down to it, wouldn’t you agree that death seems more powerful and more prevalent than life? Too often it is death that has the last word, not life. But Easter proclaims something profoundly different. Easter proclaims loud and clear for all to hear that despite appearances, life, not death, has the last word. It’s a leap to believe that, I know, because there is so much evidence to the contrary, but it is the message of Easter and it is what brings us here this morning. We sometimes call Easter the New Creation. At the dawn of creation, before time began, God spoke a Word that, in whatever wondrous way, brought light from darkness and sparked the miracle of life. Easter is a moment like that. On Easter God spoke a Word and for the second time, in a most wondrous way, Light came from darkness, Life from death. When Jesus came forth from the tomb, creation was happening a second time! In raising Jesus from the dead, God didn’t take away death but he did take away its power. It’s ultimate power. God reached into the death and destruction that surround us all and began to build something new. Easter is the New Creation! This Easter -- maybe more than others -- we need to hear this message. And I know -- it can all seem a bit unreal. It’s not easy to hold onto hope – not when we have to deal with death in the many ways it comes at us – personally: in serious illness, or in the loss of a loved one, or the loss of a job, or the break-up of a marriage; or more globally, in things like war, terrorism, economic meltdown. Where is hope, where is life in all of that? But, my friends, we must not let our disillusionments, our dismay, our fears, or our sad experiences have the last word. It is our faith that needs to have the last word: our Easter faith that God is indeed making something new and using us to help make it; our Easter faith that the seeds of love and justice we plant today will over time grow and blossom into something good and beautiful. The resurrection of Jesus is God’s promise that there is hope – not just for eternal life but for this life, too. I remember once reading an article that talked about the Easter faith of the great Jesuit theologian and paleontologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. It seems he had given an address in which he painted an idyllic vision of unity and peace for the human family and for the world that sounded like a page from Isaiah or Revelation (new heavens and a new earth; all God’s people streaming up the mountain – swords being beat in to plowshares and spears into pruning hooks). A colleague challenged him: “That’s a wonderful, tantalizing vision, but suppose we blow up the world with a nuclear bomb? What happens to your vision then?” “That would set things back millions of years,” Chardin replied, “but the vision will still come to pass, not because I say so or because the facts right now indicate that it will, but because God promised it and in raising Jesus from the dead God has shown that he can deliver on that promise!” My friends, the triumph of Jesus over death assures us that our world and our lives will make sense in the long run, even if they sometimes seem to be spinning out of control. The march of history will not end in some cruel joke even if along the way there are tragic detours. The final word in our personal pilgrimage and in the story of the human family will be a word of light and life. The popular contemporary spiritual writer, Father Ron Rolheiser, once wrote that the pivotal issue of faith for us today is believing that God really can bring about resurrection in our lives -- that God can raise our world from its dark, hopeless tomb. I think he’s right. And there’s no magic formula for coming to that kind of faith. But there is the risen Christ, and he is in our midst, and in the Eucharist he comes to us with all his power and all his life. And he speaks to us today words of hope that echo the angels’ words to those brave, bewildered women at the tomb: “Why do you seek the Living One among the dead? He is not here. He has been raised!” Father Michael G. Ryan
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Easter Sunday