Happy Easter

A glorious Easter to you!  I anticipated thrilling worship on Easter Day and it turned out to be just that (!) with a worshipful crowd including many old friends packed into church.  What a privilege to help lead that congregation on the greatest day of the Christian calendar.  In my sermon I marveled at the impossibility of Easter, yet its absolute necessity.


I didn't use a poem by John Updike, but it was in my mind:
    Make no mistake: if He rose at all
    it was as His body;
    if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino
    acids rekindle,  
    the Church will fall. 
    Let us not mock God with metaphor,
    Analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
    making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded credulity of
    earlier ages:
    let us walk through the door.
    Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
    for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
    lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed by the
    miracle,
    and crushed by remonstrance.


Yes, Easter is monstrously disruptive for the rest of time.  Alleluia.  May this Easter week be the best ever, lived in resurrection power.