Easter Sunday – Cycle A
Reflecting on John 20: 1-9
It’s Easter. Can you feel it? Here in Denver, we don’t feel as if we earned it, because it’s been deliciously warm all winter. Our friends back east, though, really worked for it this year. But, whether we deserve it or not, birds have suddenly found their way back to our back yard and are greeting us with Easter song. Every spring it’s a delightful surprise when the perennials pop up on the south side of our driveway. You again! We forgot all about you. How sweet of you to keep popping up in our neglected yard, reminding us that Easter happens, ready or not.
How was your Lent? Was your fast helpful in pulling you back from the things that are hurting you? Are you more who you want to be, more determined to “not go back to that place of slavery” that keeps you dependent, or powerless? That’s always my goal, and once again I didn’t achieve it.
But God brings Easter anyway, whether we had a successful Lent or not. Our relentlessly loving God keeps sending flowers and rains, lilacs and lilies, baby chicks and baby humans. An endless Lent is just not in God’s nature. Easter is God’s nature, with its resurrections and Alleluias, its promise of new life, its memory of an empty tomb, and our Christ, whose triumph over the grave has opened the graves of all believers.
So once again I’ll shake off the ashes of failure, lift my face up to the sun, and hold my hands open wide. It’s Easter, and the powers of hell cannot prevail against it. Let the feast of the forgiven begin.
How will you celebrate this Fifty Day Feast?
Kathy McGovern c. 2026