Er Ist Wahrhaftig Auferstanden! He Is Risen Indeed!

Christ Is Risen. He Is Risen Indeed!  The story of cross and empty tomb only has meaning if we are willing to LIVE that story. Unless we are serious about embodying the truth of the resurrection with our lives, we lose its power.  Brian Wren and Adolfo Perez Esquivel will help me make that point.

Wren's 1989 poem reminds us of the "Power To Change" inherent in the Good News. Perez Esquivel's picture "Triumph of Life" depicts the Resurrected Christ leading a march of landless Campesinos, with the ships of the conquistadors and the factories of globalization in the background. 

A body, broken on a cross, with watching women's helpless grief,

and men in heedless, headlong flight, through fear, despair or disbelief --
in this, though still we find it strange, are life, and hope, and power to change.

A people weaponless and weak, not many wealthy, great or wise,
but women, laborers and slaves, absurd to Greek and Roman eyes,
their Caesar's rages could forgive, out-die, out-suffer, and out-live.

Adolfo Pérez Esquivel: Station 15: Triumph of Life 

And still today, abroad, at home, from suburb or from shanty-town,
the Spirit's new, surprising word, in ours or other faiths, or none,
our sad routines will disarrange with gospel-hope of power to change.

When disillusion chains our feet and might and money turn to dust,
when exile, desert, or defeat have left us nothing else to trust,
at last our spirit understands the strength of peaceful, nail-scarred hands.

A nation drifting in decline can turn to just and loving ways,
and people empty, bruised, ashamed, can find rebirth to joy and praise,
and churches, wakened, can exchange a huddled death for power to change.

("Power to Change" by Brian Wren)

If indeed we have "decided to follow Jesus" (as we sang at St. Paul's on Good Friday), our place is NOT with the mighty ones, but with those "sinned against", those who are oppressed and pushed to the margins. Christ Is Risen. He Is Risen Indeed! Hallelujah!

Matthew 28: 1-10

P.S. For more reading on Holy Week and Easter, take a look at my "Holy Week Companion", found on my website, at http://sites.google.com/site/fritzwendt/theologycabinet -- the links are in the middle of the page.