04/05/2026
Homily, Easter 2026
Spring is the time when we see the return of rain, the greening of the grass, the first flowers of the year starting to poke their heads above the soils, the return of songbirds and the longer and warmer days. Nature wakes up from a long winter slumber. We look forward to the awakening of spring, the leaves sprouting and inexorably growing larger day by day. There is a feeling of newness amidst the old, of renewal and growth as life continues its cyclical changes. New growth expands the opportunity for life to flourish while old trees shed branches or themselves topple in the winds, making room and chances for other, younger growth to succeed them.
There are seasons to everything, Ecclesiastes tells us. A time for everything. Ecclesiastes 3:15 tells us that “Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before; and God will call the past to account”.
This is the season we celebrate the resurrection of Christ, the time of rebirth and renewal. The earth has always birthed us, and has always been the womb of our formation. Under its sky has always lived the wise and the foolish, the intelligent and the ignorant, the contented and the desperate. Those who love and those who hate have always breathed the same air, sipped the same waters, eaten of the same foods grown from showers that fell from the same clouds. The same nature that nurtures and sustains all of life, does so without favoritism or judgement.
"A time to plant, and a time to uproot, a time to tear down and a time to build."
The Easter story is one that is age old, yet refreshingly new. It is the story of those in power whose limited vision of life only understands power, meeting those whose unlimited and unbounded love and wisdom needs no approval, no political or temporal permission to enter into the human heart, and being thereby threatened. It is the story of ego. It is the story of fear. It is the story of how love always overcomes hate, how inclusiveness and belongingness always overcomes terror and violence.
When Mary entered the tomb and found it empty, the first thing she says to Peter and John is that “they” took the body. Indeed, the burial clothes were there, but nothing else. Where was it?
"A time to search, and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away."
The disciples were told by angels that He had arisen and departed, and was not to be found in the tomb. As this news spread among the followers, what was despair turned into hope. And when ultimately He appeared to them, they were overjoyed.
"A time to mourn, and a time to dance."
Both the Easter story and Ecclesiastes point to something fundamental about our lives: there are seasons and times. We are young, we are middle aged and then we are old. In all of those seasons, we are continually reborn again and again with new insight, new wisdom, new visions and new understanding. We see life born around us; we see life fulfilled and we see life transformed. We are not the same person today that we were yesterday. Some seasons are slow in their progress. Some seasons explode with unpredictable growth. The world around us changes constantly. To the disciples, the empty tomb was the change that defined their lives and defined the meaning and the direction of their search for wisdom. It was the single event that marked the dividing line between being people of belief and being people of faith. Faith became focused on what is internal rather than what is external.
"A time to be silent and a time to speak."
If there is a time to be silent and a time to speak, there is also a time to reflect and a time to act. To those that followed Jeshua, the change in identity began very soon after the events on Calvary hill. Those who believed that the Messiah had just been murdered by the state began to see themselves differently and began to seek to understand those events by pouring through the scriptures to try to make sense of it, to try to add some sort of structure around it to contain the wisdom they had been exposed to during their time with Jeshua. There was a period of contemplation, meditation, collective and communal prayer and discussions to try to understand and contextualize what those events meant to them and to their future.
The result is that generations of people have been given cause to hope; cause to understand that faith can be challenged by the cruelties and uncertainties of the world, but ultimately cannot be extinguished. What is inside of people—the love, the empathy, the kindness, the desire to help those who cannot help themselves—cannot be suppressed forever. Some may try to suppress these qualities, but the cost of doing so is high. The power of love has always been—and always will be—more sustainable than the power of the world—the power of force, of politics, of cruelty, of division, of neglect and of lies. What the Easter event demonstrates is the utter uselessness of the power of the world. The power of love is the only truth that cannot be hidden by the power of the world. It is the sun that shines through the clouds, the sun that drives all of life on earth. It is the sun that shines in our own hearts, illuminating our journey. It is the eternal cycle of seeker looking to find, and finding that what was sought was always within themselves.
Ecclesiastes tells us that whatever is, has already been, and what will be has been before. It is the eternal cycle of life looking for itself only to find that it was never separate from itself. It is the fish in search of the ocean, only to find that the ocean lives within it and without it. These cycles—of age, of time, of wisdom and of ignorance—have all been before, and will be again. Hope is diminished, and hope is found again. Wisdom becomes ignorance, and wisdom is found again. The storms come, the sun shines, the cold comes, the heat arrives. In all these cycles and seasons, the message of Easter is hidden in plain sight: Love is always there. Love never leaves, it never changes, it can only be hidden for a little while before it is found again. Love, like the sun, the rain, the greening of the earth, the song of the birds, is given to all. It is the wise who recognize this. Chapter seven of Ecclesiastes tells us this:
Wisdom, like an inheritance, is a good thing
And benefits those who see the sun.
Wisdom is a shelter…but the advantage of knowledge is this:
Wisdom preserves those who have it.
The lessons of Easter are many, but the wisdom of Easter is one: there is no greater power than Love.
