EASTER PEOPLE IN THE PANDEMIC

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Here is the text of my sermon at the Easter Vigil this year.

I believe it’s safe to say that every one of us will remember this Easter for the rest of our lives. Having to celebrate the most important feast of the Christian calendar seperated from our families and friends guarantees that this Easter will feel weird at best, and even somber or sad. We’re telling one another “It doesn’t feel like Easter.” It feels “hollow.”

We can’t miss the bitter irony that just at the time when the Church is celebrating the mystery of Christ’s rising gloriously triumphant and conquering the powers of death, We find ourselves in the clutches of this deadly pandemic.

Tonight of all nights we need to take seriously the question that many people of good will are posing:  “If God is supposedly all loving and also all powerful, then how can you explain the existence of this horrible pandemic? Why would a good God allow such terrible suffering?”

There are different responses to this question:

One response is frustration: Since there is no reasonable answer, I conclude that there really is no God. Since I can’t figure out why there is so much pain and evil in the world, I give up in frustration and cry out angrily,  “There is no God, and I hate him!”

Another way of reacting if there is no God is to make up your own God, and settle for some created thing that gives your life some temporary meaning: Money, power, prestige, or pleasure. People get away with this pretty often in fact. But when some overwhelming evil such as Covid-19 crashes into their lives, money or power or popularity suddenly don’t work very well.

I want to mention another response, one that religious believers too often fall back on. At times like the present, these folks are embarrassed for God,
So they try to find excuses for God’s seemingly terrible behavior. So they come up with plausible reasons why God is allowing evil: The pandemic is a punishment for the world’s sin. An angry God has finally gotten fed up with our sinfulness, and has started slapping his children around. The idea is, I guess, that if the pandemic is our fault, then this shifts the blame from the Lord and onto us. The fact that this also makes God into an angry, abusive, unforgiving and spiteful tyrant doesn’t seem to bother these pious folks.

Well, unfortunately, as we know, none of these solutions work:

We’re STUCK in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, that’s about as evil a thing as you can imagine.

And there’s no way out.

So far this doesn’t sound like much of an Easter sermon. Let’s try looking at the gospel accounts of

the resurrection. That first Easter morning was anything but joyful and comforting. Some women go to the tomb to find that Jesus’ body is missing. Then conflicting reports start circulating about
white-robed messengers and burial clothes.

Everyone is confused, and no one knows quite what to believe at first.All they know for certain was that the tomb is empty. Imagine how frustrated you and I would be this evening if all we had to celebrate was an empty tomb!

But then, the crucial stage of the Easter story begins: The risen Lord starts appearing to his disciples. These encounters with the Risen Jesus change everything. Out of defeat has come victory! Out of death has come new life! But, and here a crucial point, the crucified and risen One was invisible to non-believers -- he could be seen only with the eyes of faith!

Now at last we’re getting somewhere with our Easter homily. We, too, can see the Risen Christ, but only with the eyes of Faith. And this is exactly why we come together tonight, to celebrate the resurrection, to shout that Jesus has conquered death!

When we train our eyes of faith on the coronavirus pandemic, we see so much more than frightening statistics, and photos of  refrigerated trucks full of corpses. As women and men of faith, we can see the Risen Lord in the midst of all this suffering and confusion on this Easter Day.

I wonder if you noticed that this evening there was no entrance hymn. On this, the most important feast of the year. As one of my students might say, “What’s up with that?”

You may remember that the service on Good Friday ended abruptly, with the celebrant simply walking away in total silence. And then, tonight the liturgy began right where we left off on Friday afternoon: in total silence.
This is a profound Easter symbol: the two celebrations of Good Friday and Easter Sunday are blended seamlessly into one reality called the Paschal Mystery. 

The lack of an entrance hymn tonight was meant t0 remind us that just as in our own lives, Good Friday and Easter are not two independant realities, the suffering and pain of our own Good Fridays make sense only when we see them as part of the MYSTERY of Easter Sunday. And our Easter celebration this evening will make no sense at all unless we see it as part of the world’s Good Friday, as our brothers and sisters this evening are sharing in the suffering of Jesus on the cross.

Saint Augustine tells us that we are “Easter People;” and as Easter People, we are to be the Risen Lord for others. This is how the Risen One intends to appear to each of us, the way he did to Mary Magdalene that first Easter morning, when she didn’t recognize him at first.

Through you and me, Jesus wants to make himself visible to the eyes of faith: This is why something inside of us responds so warmly whenever we hear stories  of  loving  brothers and sisters going out of their way to help others in need: We recognize in those people the Risen Jesus, and we can say with the apostles, “I have seen  the Lord!”

I had that experience a couple of days ago, and I’d like to share it with you.
EMS Facebook page:
University Hospital, Newark    April 4 at 7:28 PM     Terry Hoben

I honestly don’t know where to begin. It was 10:54 this morning and Grembo was calling. He said quickly "we have a problem". Our emergency department was in trouble, staffing critically low, many patients on ventilators and more were coming in. We went back and forth and talked about what we could do to help … they needed our help. They needed us - EMS. The facebook post went out asking for help. I called the chiefs in Newark and asked for their help and they briefed our duty Medics, EMT’s, and Nurses. It was only a few minutes and the phone began to ring with many saying they would help.
The sheer number of our EMS men and women answering the call for help was staggering. It was only minutes later, and our MICU’s were moved to waiver mode and single medic initiated, our EMT’s stepped up and the system continued. Off duty nurses and paramedics raced to the ED to help. NorthSTAR landed bringing two nurses and a medic too. When I arrived our EMS team was in Tyvek, eye pro and respirator helping everyone. The scene was breathtaking, ED nurses were moved to tears, 14 EMS staff filled the ED. I can’t put to words how heart-warming and proud I was to see everyone in action and knowing the rest of our team was in the field working so hard to keep the streets together.
To all “our” Paramedics, Nurses, EMT’s, dispatchers and the Supervisors upstairs and down who answered the call for help today and showed up doing what we all know is uncomfortable and scary, dealing with this freaking horrible COVID-19. This invisible enemy that has hurt our fellow department members terribly, some fortunate to return to talk about it and others that still lay in their hospital beds under care.
We are University Hospital EMS and YOU are the best damn group of EMS professionals that have ever blessed this earth. Please stay safe and be careful out in the streets and in our Emergency Department where all of you are working right now!

What do you mean it doesn’t feel like Easter this year?
To the eyes of faith, this is what the Risen Christ looks like on Easter, 2020. Isn’t it the risen Christ who phones the elderly couple who live in the apartment downstairs and offers to go shopping for them? Isn’t it the Risen Christ who comes as a sixteen year old living in our residence hall these days, and spends hours helping in our parish food pantry because the volunteers can’t come in? Isn’t it the Risen Christ we see on television in all sorts of generous people who are finding ways of helping their brothers and sisters to get through these difficult days?

What do you mean it doesn’t feel like Easter this year?
Sisters and brothers, we are Easter People. Easter is happening all around us through Easter People like you and me.

So, at first glance, it may not seem like Easter this year. There are fewer marshmallow eggs and no big family get-togethers. But if we celebrate it as Easter people, by being the Risen Christ to one another, then I believe it’s safe to say that every one of us truly will remember this Easter as one of the best ones ever.

Happy Easter!