Slow Down and Let Easter Change You

“Do not be afraid.
He is risen from the dead, just as he said.”

I was talking with a colleague this week,
and she said, “God, where has the year gone?
It is Easter already, has Lent already passed?”
I said, yeah, it has. I sympathize.

Lent seemed to go faster than any forty days recently.
We never seem to ever get a chance to slow down.
It is not true of all the country,
but it is particularly true of this area.

We have a fast pace of life here in the Valley.
You do not realize how fast it is
until you step out of it and then come back.
I regularly go see my brother up in Park City,
Utah, and things are way slower up there.

It is great because you come back and you chill.
But when you come back in here, everyone speeds up.
Even we drive faster, we wait in line faster,
everything is faster. I mean, everything.

But it is in the midst of this that God comes to us.
That is why we set aside forty days each year
to pause and slow down and take in the message,
because especially for us, it is so hard.

Even our Lent was busy this year.
We had this beautiful retreat and painted a mural
in our parish center hall,
a beautiful wall that many of you helped create.
And we had many other things going on.

In the midst of all of that, it is hard to slow down.
I cannot help but think of that great musical,
Jesus Christ Superstar. Do you remember that?
There is this scene where Mary Magdalene
gets to the end and Jesus is dead
and everything is falling apart.

And she says, “Can we start over again, please?
This is not quite what was expected.”
It is so well placed because she was not regretting.
She wanted to have paid more attention.
It was a genuine lament, a genuine yearning
to catch it when it was happening.

That is what we tried to do in Lent.
We had this theme of untying our knots
to prepare for seeking joy.
And that is what we are seeking today:
the joy of the gospel, the joy of the risen Lord.

We have to sometimes undo those knots.
In the gospel we hear this very same thing play out.
Mary Magdalene comes and her world is devastated.
The earth shook and he dies upon the cross.
She is devastated. He is gone.

She and the other Mary, there was no way
they could have prepared for what was coming next.
They went to the tomb and came with their love
and a bag full of spices.
They were going to do one last genuine act of love
for their beloved, to anoint the body.

But when they get there, there is an earthquake,
and the angel is sitting on top of the stone
that is rolled away, and he says,
“Do not be afraid.”

“Go tell your brother disciples
to meet Jesus in Galilee.” And they go.
They could not have been prepared for this.
They were confused. Of course they were confused.
They were fearful.
That is why he says, “Do not be afraid.”

Here is what is beautiful about Matthew’s gospel.
As they are leaving, heading back to the disciples,
Jesus appears to them on the way.
And Jesus says, “Do not be afraid.
Go back to Galilee and tell them,
there I will see them.”

It is such a beautiful reminder that God through Christ
joins us on the way.
He never just tells us to do something.
He tells us to do and then joins us on the way.
He journeys with us.

Now what is most significant about Galilee here
is that Galilee is not just a physical location.
Galilee is where they first left behind their nets.
Galilee was where they first heard Jesus.
It is where they first began to believe in Jesus.
And it is where they first followed Jesus.

So what Jesus is saying, and the angels with him,
is go back to your first love.
Go back to that place where you felt the spark
of love in your life.
Go back to where you felt you were a child of God.
That is where I will be.
And I will be with you on the journey back too.

That is what we are called to do.
We are called to go back to our first love of Christ.
Maybe that came through a loving relationship.
Maybe that came through your spouse
whom you are sitting beside today.

Or maybe it came through a child born to you,
and that child is with you today.
Or maybe it was with your parents
who are not here with you today,
or some other friend who is not here.
But we have to go back to that place and recall.

Why? Because the world keeps coming at us
to go faster and faster.
We need to slow down to take that message in,
to let it soak in and let it land.

Because once we feel loved like that,
once we feel loved for who we are,
not for what we do or what we have,
but for who we are, then it changes everything.

That is what God is saying to us,
that he looks upon us and loves us just as we are.
We do not have to change.

Let me give you a pedestrian example of this.
Often when I am reading in my suite in the rectory,
sitting on the sofa, every now and then I look up
and I can see my dog is staring at me.

You know when somebody is looking at you?
You can feel it. I can feel she is looking at me.
And when our eyes meet, her tail starts going,
and then she relaxes, and I go back to reading.

Then I look over again and she is staring at me,
and I give her the eyes and the tail goes again.
What is that about? She just wants to be recognized.
She wants to feel safe and secure.

It is her saying, I love you and you are here.
And I am saying, I love you and I am here.
And we go back to our ways.

Now you do this with your children or grandchildren.
You just look at them and you cannot help but say,
I love this person who came into my life.
I have been transformed by this person.

Maybe you could say that to your spouse as well:
my life would not be the same without this person.
Let that soak in for a minute.
It changes us, my friends. That love changes us.
It cannot help but change us.

That is what the resurrection is about, my friends.
The world wants to tell us that death is the end,
that death has the final word.
But that is not what we say.
Today we say that is not the final word.
The resurrection is the final word.

And the currency of the resurrection is love.
The language of the resurrection is love.

So my friends, let us just soak it in.
Let that marinate inside of us and transform us,
if only for today. Let us slow down enough.
You cannot speed up marination,
and nor can you speed up this.

Let us soak in the love of God in our hearts today.
He is just gazing at us, wanting us to know
that we are loved, that we are his and he is ours.

Now here is the really important part.
You cannot keep it for yourself.
You have got to share it with others.
The world so desperately needs that love.

So, look upon someone else this day
and share that glance, that love,
with somebody who is broken and wounded in this world.
Because we believe the darkness is overcome by the light.

Bitterness is overcome by gentleness.
Unforgiveness is taken over by forgiveness.
Hate and war and violence is replaced by love.
You and I are part of that equation.

Today, let us soak in that Christ is risen
and he loves us so much he came to share that.
He wants us to know that we are loved
and to pass that love on.
Do not be afraid.

“Do not be afraid.
He is risen from the dead, just as he said.”