Rector's Reflections - Easter 2006

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

During Holy Week and Easter, we moved with Jesus in his last days, remembering the Last Supper, how he ate and drank and washed the feet of his disciples. We remembered the psalms he said as he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, hoping with every prayer that God would remove the necessity of his having to die on the cross. Then, the crucifixion began and we watched and waited, holding in our minds and hearts the awareness that the sins of the whole world, (our sins, our world), were what put Jesus up there.

It is so often a Good Friday world. Pick up any newspaper, any day, and you will see multiple crosses with multiple victims in every part of the world.

But at the heart of this drum beat of crucifixion, there is something else that enters in. It is the awareness that there is a call to life and newness, an experience that there is a force even stronger than death and sin. It is the force of God’s love, which is what brought Jesus from death to life on Easter Day.

The Reverend William Sloane Coffin, recently departed this life, said that the Resurrection represents the victory of “powerless love over loveless power.” And it is by that love that we are called to live, not by the “loveless powers” of this world.

Our Easter Day celebration was so joyous, with an abundance of Spirit, people, and new life. I hope and pray you will each keep open to the good news of what the Resurrection is, and that our community here at St. Alban’s will more and more reflect and proclaim that reality. Good Friday will always be with us, but it is the job of the church to produce Easter people, those who know and live out the Resurrection in their lives. Come and join us!

Alleluia!

(The Reverend) Susan W. Klein