"Looking in the Direction of Easter"

Text(s): 1 Corinthians 13:10-12 and Luke 23:42-43

Every year at this time we start watching for the little signs that reflect the coming of spring: robins, jonquils, forsythia, snowbirds returning from Arizona and Florida. All of these signs converge and accumulate until we say, at last, it is now officially spring! The winter is gone! The call of the turtle dove is heard in the land!

So, spring comes. But I wonder where we look, how we watch, what early signs we should seek, when we want to know if it is Resurrection yet?

Paradise is hard to see and hard to spot in this world, I think. As Paul says, we now know only in part; we see, but dimly, so very dimly, how things should be, how things will be, even how things already are. We are all pretty much like the crucified thief, in a spiritual dead of winter, before he dared to call out to Jesus - still cold, still suffering in the dark, still barely aware that things could yet turn out differently. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis a little from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, if there is only Good Friday and never Easter, then sin and death win. We lose. Spring never comes. Paradise never blossoms among us. Hope never gains its full victory. Fair love never wins faint heart. Mistakes never do get set right; sin never does get forgiven; failure never is forgotten; grudges never are superseded by hopeful trust; and our hope is truly futile. "We of all people are most to be pitied..." if there is only Good Friday.

This is why we all need to seek Easter and resurrection, even in little glimpses, for Easter is power. Resurrection is not merely a fantasy for the soul-weary or the disturbed, any more than spring is for the winter-fatigued heart. It is not mind-candy, or some magic cure for triskaidekaphobia or other superstitious fears. Even in the tiny buds and pre-dawn chirps we see of it in this world, it is the power of God to transform all things, to restore all losses, to comfort all hearts, to give wings to the weary. When we cry out for help from our many winters and personal Good Fridays, only God can answer us from the direction of Easter Sunday with such words as these: “You will be with me in Paradise.” Spring will come to the heart and soul! Then you shall know face to face!