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I don’t know about you, but Easter was a particularly amazing experience for me this year. Lent and Holy Week were a special progression in my devotional life, and sharing this season with San Marco Church for the first time provided its own joy. But most of all, Sunday morning, Easter morning was such an amazing celebration: followers of Jesus gathered to profess the risen Christ, the hope of the empty tomb, and the world-changing gift of resurrection. And then Monday happened. And Tuesday. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The world kept spinning and its disruption was far from absent. Another mass-shooting, war, corruption, hatred and selfishness run amok. It’s enough to feel as though the light of Easter is already fading, or to allow our hope to be overwhelmed by fear. I share this not as disappointment or judgment, but acknowledgment and confession. The world is powerful, the darkness is present, and it can feel like hope is out of reach. Even in the days following Easter. In recognizing my own experiences this week, I’ve been reminded of the unique promise of Jesus. The promise, as John’s Gospel begins, not that darkness is gone, but that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1.5). Which feels applicable not just to Easter 2023, but to that first Easter, when, in the midst of selfish motivations among his own followers, infighting among his own religion, and political manipulations from an oppressive state, Jesus chose to trust in love. He washed the feet of his disciples, including those who had betrayed and would deny him, and welcomed them to the table set with the gifts of his own body and blood. He healed a man who had come to take him away, prayed for those driving in the nails, and promised paradise to one of the thieves crucified next to him. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. The promise of Easter, the hope of resurrection is the foundation of this belief: even the world’s greatest power, death, is overcome. It’s why resurrection speaks to us here and now as we face our own experiences of betrayal, denial, injury, and fear. We can also choose to trust in God’s ongoing work of love, in the light that shines in the darkness, rather than taking up the tools of betrayal, denial, injury, and fear. And that is hard work, which I believe – at least for me – is why it can be frustrating to face it in the days following such an incredible Easter experience. But the promise of God includes the good news that we never have to face it alone. So I celebrate, here in this first weekly San Marco Church blog, the privilege of being a part of this body of Christ. That we can be in this world together and at this work together. And that we can always turn to God in prayer and discipleship and worship and be fed with hope again. Forgiven again. Filled with love and light again. Because Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Thanks be to God. Amen. Rev. Ben Richards
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