EASTER EVERLASTING!

Easter Everlasting! It was a Spring day not unlike recent ones. Taking a turn into piney woods down a dirt road outside of Norristown, Georgia our family station wagon meandered amongst the Georgia pines with wisteria, dogwood, and wild azalea infusing the air and bringing a palette of pastels to the sojourn. We’d come prepared with our rakes , hoes, tools, and scrub brushes to clear out the family cemetery. Looming before us in the clearing before us the tomb stones and graves were cloistered amidst the trees. To me we seemed like intruders in the hush that hung there like the wisteria in the pines. My grandmother was the guide, calling the roll of those who lay there, reconnecting us to our ken. The small graves were the most compelling as she shared that these little ones were victims of an influenza out break. While the others hoed and raked, I lingered there as she knelt with devotion with her scrub brush and she directed me to pour into the tin bucket the concoction that would restore the tombs to their alabaster glory. Gradually with her efforts the inscribed text emblazoned there became legible and I read aloud its words: Behold you who pass by, As I am now so you must be, Prepare for death.... And follow me. This MOMENTO MORI ( “remember that you will die”) is an inscription that dates back to pre-Christian times and throughout the ages served to remind those who read it of the inevitability of death. Here on that spring day of my early youth it seemed unfathomable. But life would instruct me otherwise. Death would come. That cemetery lesson regarding my own immortality would only be “owned” in the context of my faith journey and the sealing of my identity as one who lives as Easter people must live. For Easter people every Sunday is another Easter. We gather every Sabbath because Christ is Risen and it is because He is risen that we worship and “move and have our being.” Without Easter every Sunday would be a MOMENTO MORI... a remembrance of one who had lived and like us met death. Easter people gather because all death has been conquered... not only death as in the end of our lives here, but the death of all the principalities and powers that would rob all of creation of hope and the promise of the everlasting. So much of what we assume will last forever soon comes to an end. Long after the lilies have faded and lost their scent the everlasting in Easter thrives and blossoms forth. The composer Natalie Sleeth gifted the church with her beautiful HYMN OF PROMISE with the publishing of The United Methodist Hymnal in 1989. Composed during the terminal illness of her husband Dr. Ronald Sleeth the hymn beautifully illustrates why Easter is everlasting and why this is a more fitting inscription for Easter people: IN OUR END IS OUR BEGINNING; IN OUR TIME, INFINITY; IN OUR DOUBT THERE IS BELIEVING; IN OUR LIFE, ETERNITY. IN OUR DEATH, A RESURRECTION; AT THE LAST, A VICTORY, UNREVEALED UNTIL ITS SEASON, SOMETHING GOD ALONE CAN SEE. In the summer of 1990 I first heard the glorious hymn sung by a choir of children’s voices at Lake Junaluska as we celebrated that Easter is EVERLASTING. The hymn living in the voices of the children that beautiful summer day has never been forgotten and ever reminds me of the power and promise of Easter. May all our Sundays be everlasting Easters!