Are you changed?
By Rev. Laurie Hill

[March 23, 2021]  I like to watch the “Springtime” baking competition shows. Often times their theme is “Easter.” And while I love watching the bakers create an enormous bunny out of cake and modeling chocolate, or an egg shaped treat, I am reminded that nowhere in their interpretation of “Easter treat” is the story of transformation from death to life.

No one ever challenges them to bake a cross or even an empty tomb where a beautiful treat in the shape of an angel may be awaiting to tell someone the good news!

Because of secular interpretations of Christian holidays of Christmas and Easter, our culture has lost the true meanings and purposes of celebration of these important holidays. It’s up to you and I to reclaim it! We need to shout the Good News! There is HOPE after all!

We need hope now so very badly! Yes, vaccines are being distributed so our society is slowly opening like we see the beginnings of spring flowers poking through the ground and the buds on trees. Yet, we still have to be patient for the transformation of our lives.

Easter means new life, new hope, new grace, new ways of being in this world. Easter will emerge differently this year.

Can we emerge from an empty tomb with new life? Or will we go back to our old understandings of life.

Some may still choose to wear masks in public. Others may be diligently using sanitizer more often than they did before. When we wash our hands, many of us will continue to count to 20 or sing our chosen ditties. My daughter quipped that her four-year-old daughter may someday tell her own child not to worry as they see Grandma (my daughter) washing off her groceries, teaching “she lived through the pandemic.”

Those are outward changes, though. How will this Easter transform your spirit? How will you be different now?

I hope our relationships will be hugely valued and celebrated. Being gentle and careful and accepting of each other’s “ways” or “adopted protocol” will be the way of the world for those of us who understand Christ commanded us to love one another and not to judge one another.

As you look into the empty tomb, will you hear Jesus call your name?

Will you be able to see an Easter egg as a sign of hope, no matter how elegantly it’s decorated? Will you be able to see the Easter bunny as an anthropomorphic symbol of giving and spreading joy?

Will you be able to embrace this new world one with varying perceptions, varying understandings and varying ideologies with the same zeal the disciples did as they walked along with a stranger whom they did not recognize on a path?

Christ is in the heart of everyone, the known and the unknown. I hope we can all embrace the gift of transformation and live into Easter joy, love, and hope!

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"Love God with all your heart, mind and soul. Love your neighbor as yourself."

[Rev. Laurie Hill
St. John United Church of Christ
204 Seventh St.
Lincoln, IL 62656]