I think sometimes that the Easter Season has a marketing and promotion problem, and let me explain a little about why. Think back to the season of Lent a few weeks ago; we might all have a slightly different way of expressing it, but after 2,000 years we all have successfully learned what Lent is, that Lent is a time for regrouping, for taking stock, for prayer and fasting and deciding what changes and forms of reconversion might be good for us. That has been very successful. And then the Easter comes, and in these seven weeks we’re supposed to now feel and do — what exactly? I don’t think we have been nearly as well trained for a season of joy as we have for a season of repentance.
So today let’s ask the question — what does this Easter season really offer us? Here is one clue. Pope Francis said last week that being a Christian isn’t about what you believe so much as it is about a relationship, the relationship that we have with Christ, that you have with Christ. Understanding what our relationship with the risen Jesus is right now is why we’re here in these seven weeks of Easter. Because if we really understood that relationship, understood what happened on Easter Sunday, how close God is to us and wants to be with us, how much love there is that created this world and continues to create it, if we felt all that, there isn’t a limit to what that love could release in us. We’d be transformed from what humans usually face in life, people who are afraid of their enemies, worried about the wolves that surround us, people who are looking for salvation in all the wrong places, instead we’d see that God has overcome everything, and is offering us his presence to support us in all our attempts to be the people God created us to be.
What does the risen Christ want to give us? I read a comment by a scripture scholar who pointed out that the risen Christ when he encountered his friends after the resurrection, gave each one of them exactly what they needed. Mary Magdalene was devastated, so Jesus called her by name and she knew she was remembered, to Peter who desperately needed to be forgiven, he gave forgiveness, for Thomas who needed to touch him one more time, he offered his hand, to the disciples on the road to Emmaus he gave understanding and relief from their sadness. What he did with them all, really, was set them free. They were carrying burdens, and they were released from them. And now it’s us, we are with this risen Jesus who is nothing but redemptive love, who wants to take away every obstacle to being with him, every obstacle to life. All we have to do is talk with him, be aware of him, see what he is doing, ask for what we need.
We have so many names for the risen Christ, shepherd, rock, healer, friend and companion, bread and wine. And all these names we have for him are trying to describe his living presence now. Today in the gospel of course it’s shepherd, and I think we all of us struggle with these shepherd and sheep images, it doesn’t seem to do justice to Jesus or to us either. But here is an Easter Season way to look at it. I found a video last week of a sheep stuck in a deep crevice on a farm in England, with a shepherd bending over and with great difficulty hauling the sheep out of it, and then the sheep immediately bounded about 25 feet away and fell into exactly the same crevice. And I did think, I wonder if that’s the way we look to God, because sometimes it’s the way we look to ourselves, stuck, making the same mistakes again and again, seemingly not able to make progress. But what we know is that isn’t the entire story of how God sees us or what God expects from us. We have the shepherd who transforms us by love from passive animals in a field to people who can take any risk that God is calling us to, because there isn’t any crevice we can fall into where God is not right there with us. We are safe with him. Better than safe, we’re free.
Whatever you think your failings are, God might roll his eyes now and then but he is closer to us and knows us more personally than we can imagine. He lives with us the way a shepherd lives in the field with the sheep, knowing us individually and ready to die for us. He is there ready to care for you wherever you are going next. And maybe that’s why the Easter Season is so challenging, it’s a time to realize that we are free, and there are no reasons left not to go where God is inspiring you to go.