We are called to be "Easter people"

Happy Easter! May the joy of Easter be alive and strong in your life, burning inside you and straining to get out. Newness, love, and joy. That’s the message of Easter. It’s the message of our readings today. And it’s what we’re about — who we’re called to be. Because, truly, we have been called to be an “Easter people.”

Let’s start with one basic truth. The essence of God is LOVE. So, first and foremost, that’s what we’re being called to do. Over the past few months, our readings have followed Jesus as he’s opened the eyes of his disciples to just what that means. Slowly, he’s brought us along a path to a better understanding of scripture, of God’s love for us, and what it truly means to love.

Like any good teacher, Jesus starts simple and expands from there.

In the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, the focus is tight, simple, and straightforward. The covenant between Abraham and God from Genesis - “I’ll make you the Father of Nations”. The Ten Commandments in Exodus - “Thou shalt have no other God’s before me”; “Honor your father and mother;” “Thou shalt not steal.” Or the commandment from Leviticus: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Simple, straightforward, to the point — this is how you honor and show love for God.

Then the Old Testament prophets open the aperture a bit more — expanding our understanding of God’s love for us, and how we’re supposed to live. Throughout his ministry Jesus breaks open the meaning of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and all the prophets for his disciples, trying to help them understand how it all comes together in Jesus Himself as the essence of God’s love for his people.

As he teaches his disciples throughout the Gospels, Jesus expands even more on God’s love, and what it means for us. It echoes throughout his sermons, his teachings, and his parables. “Love your enemies, forgive them, pray for them.” The parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke and the Last Judgment teaching in Matthew, explaining who our neighbor truly is. And John’s Gospel from two weeks ago with Christ’s three questions to Peter, “Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep,” beginning to define just HOW we should love one another.

But today’s Gospel raises the bar even further. “I give you a new commandment: love one another. AS I HAVE LOVED YOU, SO YOU SHOULD LOVE ONE ANOTHER.” “As I have loved you” — an all-in, self-sacrificing love for you, for me, and for every one of our brothers and sisters; always thinking only of the good for the other, even to the point of sacrificing his own life for people who truly don’t deserve it. As we heard from the disciples in John’s Gospel: “This saying is hard.” And it IS a very high bar — but it’s not insurmountable. We have great historical examples of what it looks like.

St. Damien of Molokai came to Hawaiian Islands as a missionary in the mid 19th century. In 1873, Fr. Damien was sent for a three-month rotating assignment to the leper colony on Molokai, which was set up to isolate those with Hansen’s disease from the rest of the Hawaiian population. After seeing the conditions there, Fr. Damien volunteered to remain permanently. Over the next sixteen years, he cared for the lepers’ physical, medical, and spiritual needs, as well as significantly improving their quality of life. Ultimately Fr. Damien contracted Hansen’s disease and died of its complications. “As I have loved you, so you should love one another.”

St. Maximilian Kolbe was a Polish priest in the 1930s who founded an order focused on evangelization through media and broadcast. When the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, he was arrested along with his friars, but was soon released. Marked for death by the Nazis, Fr Kolbe was arrested again in 1941 and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Just a few months later, when ten men were sentenced to death by starvation after a prisoner escape, Fr. Kolbe volunteered to take the place of one of those sentenced because the man had a wife and children. Placed in starvation bunkers naked and in the dark, Fr. Kolbe led the men in prayer and songs. He was martyred on the eve of the Feast of the Assumption. “As I have loved you, so you should love one another.”

And of course, St. Teresa of Calcutta — Mother Teresa to most of us. She and her Sisters of Charity tended and fought for the poorest of the poor, the “throwaway people” on the streets of Calcutta, for over forty years. One day, they came across a man lying in the gutter, very near death. He was filthy, dressed in little more than a rag, with flies swarming all over his body. Immediately, Mother Teresa lovingly lifted him up, cleaned his body, spoke to him softly, and laid him gently in her ambulance. A passerby, repulsed by the sight of the man, exclaimed to Mother Teresa, “I wouldn’t do that for a million dollars.” Her response was immediate, “Neither would I!” “As I have loved you, so you should love one another.”

I can almost hear the reaction in your minds: “But they’re saints! I can’t be like them!” And you’re right. On your own, you can’t do it alone. But that’s the other piece of the Easter message, and the point of our readings today. Through Christ, we have been redeemed. Through him, we have been transformed into something new. The love of Jesus Christ for us is precisely what makes it possible for us to LOVE like HIM — to become the people we are called to be. Most of us probably won’t be called to sacrifice our life, leave everything behind to serve the poor, or spend our lives tending the sick. But every one of us has been called to love, to be a beacon of Christ for all the world to see – to show the world what discipleship looks like.

God loves you. He loves you so much that he sent his only Son to die for you. And that love is alive in you, in me, in ALL of us, transforming us into a new creation. But God’s love flows THROUGH you, not TO you. It’s a gift, freely given and not at all earned. But it is a gift to be shared. That’s our Easter message and our Easter call — to share that love as Jesus did, to love without limits, just as He did — and to become the “Easter people” we are called to be.