Happy Easter!  Those are the words that many of us said to each other and to perfect strangers just a couple of weeks ago on Easter Sunday.  Such a greeting was acceptable two weeks ago, rather expected actually.  Two weeks ago, most of the various media outlets, at least for a day or two, made mention of this ancient Christian holy day.  But almost as quickly as the day sprang upon us, it has departed, and to use the greeting Happy Easter now, nearly two weeks later, would be considered weird, strange, out of touch, way-too-churchy.  We have resumed our routines and regimens, and now, for most of us, we are back to the same daily grind.

But what if we, as God’s people, lived as if Easter weren’t just a day, but were, rather, a whole new way of being, a new existence, a new perspective.  What if we lived as if the resurrection wasn’t just something that happened to Jesus two millennia ago, but was something that is still happening now, in our world, in our lives, in our midst.  

The apostle Paul was a what if, as if sort of guy. In his second letter to the Christians in the city of Corinth, Paul writes, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” For Paul, Easter wasn’t just a day.  Somehow and someway, through the death and resurrection of Jesus, God had tilted the whole axel of our existence so that what was once considered dead was now alive, what was once considered defeat was now victory, what was once to be feared was now to be welcomed.  It was as if God had taken the whole deck of cards with which we were used to playing and had thrown it into the air, causing all the well-ordered cards to go gloriously every which way.  In doing so, God had caused the rules of every card game of life to somehow be changed. 

“The old has gone; the new is here.” Those are the words of somebody whose spiritual DNA has truly been altered by the Easter message. Paul got it. He understood. And so, despite the continued challenges of his life, and despite the fact that even after the resurrection of Jesus the world looked much the same as before, Paul lived as if everything were changed. Paul lived as if truth and beauty and compassion and mercy and forgiveness and grace and justice and reconciliation mattered.  Paul lived as if the new rules of every card game of life boiled down to basically one rule… love.  And the new rules, or should I say, that one new rule was to be celebrated and lived not just on one Easter day each year, but on every day of every year.

Easter isn’t just a day.  Easter isn’t just a season.  Easter is a new way of living life connected to God and connected to each other by the tenacious tendon of love.  What if we lived as if this were indeed true?  What might our world look like if, each and every day, we truly behaved as the what if, as if folks that God is calling us to be?  Alleluia! Christ is risen!  The Lord has risen, indeed!  Alleluia!  Or to put it another way, HAPPY EASTER!

~Father Art