As I sit in my living room writing this article, I can see signs of Easter. The multi-colored streamers from our Easter Vigil service are hanging from our dining room chandelier. It has been a family tradition since we arrived at Normandale and discovered the wonderful indoor fireworks in the multi-sensory experience that is our Easter Vigil. Returning from the service, we drape the streamers around the light and for the next year, as we sit at the table, we have Easter overhead.

This year our dancers included many young girls new to the experience. After the lights came up, the organ sounded playing Jesus Christ is Risen Today. The Youth Choir members shot the canisters of streamers from the balcony draping the congregation in rainbow colors of new life, while the dancers squealed with delight and ran around the front chancel scooping up the streamers. It was a sight of sheer Easter joy.

We are very good at doing Easter at Normandale. With the amazing environment crew that transforms the Sanctuary from their Lenten theme to the brilliant designs and decorations of Easter, the spectacular music of the choir and our congregation singing the Hallelujah Chorus, we share a morning of uplifting celebration as we confess that Christ is risen. Alleluia. AMEN. Let it be so!!

It is now the second week of Easter and I wonder. Aside from the streamers in our dining room, how else is Easter present in our lives? It can be so easy to put away the Easter decorations and go back to life as usual. We remember the uplifting sermon, we smile with the recollection of the children with the Easter lamb, and we tuck the message of Easter in with all the baskets getting boxed up until next year.

But Easter isn’t just a day, it’s 50 days in our liturgical calendar…spanning out until we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit in Pentecost. More than that, Easter is our life in Christ. Easter is how we live, how we hope, how we understand who and who’s we are. We belong to Christ. We have been joined in our baptism into his death and resurrection. Because he died, we need not fear death. It’s power has been destroyed.

Because he rose again, we too have been given new life. Not just the promise of life after death, but the invitation to life BEFORE death... life lived more fully and freely because all that has bound us has been removed. All that has cocooned us, keeping us from spreading our wings, and exploring the gift of life...GONE. All that has held us back, kept us from living life all the way up to the brim and sharing God’s overflowing grace with others... GONE. The stone has been rolled away from our entombed lives.

And yet, all too easily we sit in the cave with the folded up grave clothes...unwilling to venture out in the light and life we are called into in Easter. What does it look like to be resurrected people, Eastered, and eager to leave the closed rooms of fear and shame that so easily entraps us in our daily lives?

I love how the Apostle Paul describes our resurrection life:

This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! (Romans 8:17, The Message)

Living the fullness of resurrection hope opens our eyes to all that has been given to us and brings us to our knees in praise and thanksgiving. Each day we are given is a gift of God’s grace. Living in this resurrection grace draws us out into the world with expectation and hope that God is doing a new thing each day, in ways that will surprise and sustain us. Behold I am making all things new, including and especially YOU.

What ways will God’s grace open new doors of possibility today?

God only knows...What’s next Papa?

Pastor Nancy