A strange thing happened to this preacher on my way to church today: The Salt Lake Tribune became my pulpit.
Why not? It’s Easter Sunday! This is Utah, where we talk about religion every day.
If you are not surrounded by Easter lilies and choirs with morning sunlight falling through stained glass windows then, “Blessed are you.” In fact, if Christ’s rising from the dead sounds like so much nonsense, you are in good company.
When women, the first preachers of the Easter event told their story to the apostles and disciples, “these words seemed to them an idle tale.” Why should it be different for you?Whether you are submerged in your Sunday newspaper, or coming down from your sugar high after binging on chocolate bunnies, here’s an Easter sermon you deserve to hear. I use the word “deserve” intentionally. It is stronger than “needs,” as if the gospel were an unpleasant medicine you have to swallow. It is more like, “You’ve got to hear this!”
“For God so loved the world...” You are loved. God loves the whole world, this beautiful, battered, fragile fractured world. This is the good news of Easter: The One who is love, was raised from the dead, and his Spirit is now loose in the world. It’s not only life, but love that is stronger than death.
George Pyle, The Tribune’s editorial page editor, might disavow being called a “preacher,” but he inspired this Easter sermon when he wrote about love being born out of broken hearts (“When the broken-hearted people in the world agree,” March 2, 2017).
“In the United States, we turn away from racial and other forms of hatred and abuse when, and only when, we see how much the other person hurts. The most moving passage of Martin Luther King’s ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’ wasn’t political or religious or economic. It was the part where he explained how heart-breaking it is for a black man to have to tell his child she can’t go to the local amusement park because it’s segregated, or has to stand silent as white people disrespect his mother.”
For Easter to be Easter, love needs to embrace our deep hurts, broken hearts and dying spirits. Easter calls us into the opioid crisis; homelessness; resurgence of white nationalism and racism; death penalty; families torn apart by detention/deportation; suicide; hate crimes; mistreatment, sexual harassment and assault on women; red air days; dying alone; 17 minutes of silence.
Like the first Easter morning, we join the women at the tomb, the realm of death. But we do not remain there. Death may have the last word, but it is not the final word.
Easter compels us to see signs of new life even in places where life is diminished and dying. Viktor Frankl remembers Jews in death camps who, though condemned, walked among others, comforting them, giving away their last pieces of bread. In the midst of death, they chose life.
Emma Gonzalez called us into the heart-wrenching six minutes and twenty seconds in Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Still, with broken hearts, we March for our Lives.
The First Unitarian Church and Salt Lake City Sanctuary Network stand for welcome, providing safe haven and new life for a mother and her children.
Follow Pamela Atkinson (Utah’s “Mother Teresa”) as she tirelessly organizes new ways for us to love “our homeless friends.”
Feel the compassion shared by volunteers, sitting with hospital patients who have no family or friends as they near end of life.Easter love reaches deep into our broken world and loves our broken hearts into new life. Choose love and life. Enjoy another chocolate bunny.
Steve Klemz |Pastor, Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church
Steve Klemz is pastor of the Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church, Salt Lake City.
