Remember, Louise, God already raised Jesus from the dead. You don’t have to do it again.

I’ve thought of those words from a beloved colleague every year as I struggled to prepare the Easter service. I understand it intellectually, but still made extraordinary effort to say the right words, choose the right hymns, get the premier brass ensemble, and hope for a bright spring morning, so that the congregation (and I) might experience something of the glory of resurrection.

Sometimes everything worked and worshipers floated out of the sanctuary to the triumphant strains of the Hallelujah chorus. But there were also years where untimely April snows froze the emerging crocuses and icy cloud cover obliterated any chance of catching sunlight. As a pastor in downtown Denver, one Easter fell on April 20 (i.e. “420,” a well-known local reference to the Colorado legislative bill legalizing recreational marijuana use, celebrated by gathering in city parks and smoking it openly). That year we still floated out of the sanctuary, though elevated not by music but by the pervasive, skunky aroma of pot.

Yet every year, the Church proclaims Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! And somehow, despite contingencies of weather and culture, and even more poignantly, the proximity of death and loss, personal heartbreak and national chaos, its truth transcends even the best human efforts to choreograph a perfect Easter Sunday.

That’s because Easter reveals God’s action, not ours. We cannot create (or even re-create) resurrection. Instead we bear witness to Divine Love that transforms crosses into empty tombs; the most hopeless situations, tragic consequences, and death itself into something more than The End. We tell the story and sing the songs to proclaim a mystery that is neither rational nor realistic. The faithful women who first received the news could scarcely believe it. Unthinkable!

The place where human words and actions fail, however, is the very place Christ meets us. Light and life to all he brings; risen with healing in his wings. “Hosanna!” we cry. “Save us now!” And the sobering journey from the triumphal entry to the hill of crucifixion and onward to the death-defying reality of the wide-open tomb testifies to the truth that the worst thing is not the last thing.

God is saving us all. God is saving the world God loves now. Our calling is not to raise the dead. Our calling is to proclaim the One who did, and who still is.

And that is why we can face this time and the communities we serve not with fear of imperfection, but with invincible hope. Love rules. Love will overcome. Love makes all things new.

Thanks be to God who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory. . . forever and ever. Amen. [Ephesians 3:20,21]