BISHOP’S EASTER MESSAGE, 2013

Dear Co-laborers with Christ,
As I write this message on Monday in Holy Week, snow is falling outside my study window. This year, the turn of the season seems characterized primarily by winter’s refusal to let go. Although the lower Susquehanna Valley has repeatedly dodged the most severe snowstorms this year, there is still the longing on the part of many for spring to come. Punxsutawney Phil’s empty promise of an early spring seems a betrayal now, and for all the ambiguous predictions of the wooly bears and the Farmer’s Almanac, we are reminded that the weather will do what it will do, and there’s no doing anything about it.

The need to control, or at least predict, the future seems to be a part of human nature. Exponential expansion of technology contributes to this view of human power, increasingly making us lords over our environment. And indeed, we have accomplished much for the sake of the common good. As the future broke over the last generation, our quality of life became better and better, in ways previously unimaginable. But for all our ingenuity, there are areas of life that seem beyond our control: the weather, to be sure, but also human cruelty and death. We kill one another at an alarming rate, with firearms, to be sure, but finally any way we can. And, if we survive one another, the curtain of mortality finally closes on our little lives. It is a reality we cannot control. We are all terminal cases.

We were reminded of this at the beginning of Lent when oily ashes were smeared on our foreheads and we heard the jarring words, remember you are dust; to dust you will return. And if that stark declaration was somehow lost over the forty days, the cruelty of crucifixion hammers it home. Good Friday closed with a darkness more impenetrable than Tenebrae. We not only kill one another, we will kill God, if we can. As Saturday dawned with the bleakness of a winter that will not let go, it seemed as though we had.
Hopelessness, helplessness brought women to a tomb then, to complete an unfinished ritual. In that futile helplessness, hope was born. The distant triumph song sung by the prophets now became a symphony of promises fulfilled. The paths of glory lead beyond the grave.

This too is entirely beyond our control. This is a future that we can predict, if we trust in God’s promises, but we cannot bring about. God acts to bring new and eternal life into our future by conquering death in a way beyond our ability to act in our own behalf. Because of God’s powerful act, we can imagine and the world in a different way, not a theatre for the drama of cruel sin, but the playing field of God’s grace. Our struggle for human justice can become the in-breaking light of the resurrection promise, for it is finally God’s will that oppressors be overthrown and tyrants cast down; that the poor be given hope and the hungry fed. Our gifts, prayers, concerns, politics, all become windows to the resurrection light. Because the future does belong to God, we can live lives more open to new possibilities of forgiveness and reconciliation. The wounds of a broken heart can be healed, estranged families reconciled. Bitterness and betrayal, guilt and self-loathing are laid at the door of the empty tomb.

When we lay aside our need for control, we can see our lives in the context of God’s grace and suddenly the world is filled with hope. Each new day is an opportunity for God’s will to be done. In the light of Easter, God repairs God’s creation and gives us a second chance. And the winter of our discontent is made glorious summer by the Son of God.

May God’s blessings of lustrous hope rest with you this Easter and always.
Faithfully, your bishop,
+B. Penrose Hoover