“Do not abandon yourselves to despair.” Pope John Paul II implored, “We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.”
What does that mean for us, today, on Easter Sunday 2021? It means that the most important thing in our life is not the pandemic. It is not the threat to life and finance that we continue to face. It is not even the wonderful acts of skill and service that so many have shown, even so many in our congregation, of which we are rightly proud. No, this is more than a clap. The invitation to all is to find ourselves as Easter people, something more fundamental than every other marker of who we are. We are those who have been resurrected into a new and living hope. We are those who are safe because our identity is hid in Christ in the very heart of God. We are those who are the friends of Jesus.
What does that mean? It means we are not abandoned. God will not let go of our hand, never. It means that when we look back, we see that God in Christ has stuck with humanity through the very worst we can face and when we look forward, we see that God in Christ will make whatever state we leave the world and each other in into something more beautiful than we could imagine.
So it means you are not alone, not today, not tomorrow. It means, whatever is happening, that we do not have to abandon ourselves to despair because the gigantic arms of God are here and may be found in the broken but beautiful community who Jesus gathers around himself, healing even those who may not know his name. It means that we do not have to abandon ourselves to despair but that we are found as we are, by God and by others and maybe even by ourselves. All this means we have an opportunity to sing. And hallelujah is our song.
Revd Sally Hitchiner
