Easter: A Transformation | April 20, 2025

By the Rev. Greg Farrand

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Brazilian writer and journalist Fernando Sabino once said, “In the end, everything will be all right. If it’s not all right, it’s not the end.” That sentiment elegantly captures the spirit of Easter: the hope that everything will be okay in the end.

Easter’s message isn’t primarily about Jesus’s physical body, even though that’s often where we’ve been taught to focus—on a one-time miraculous event that happened 2000 years ago. And maybe that’s why many people, even Christians, struggle to genuinely feel deeply moved by Easter. Why our churches around the country are in decline. If the central message feels disconnected from our own lives, focusing on a singular event that occurred millennia ago, it’s hard to feel engaged.

For many people in the West, Jesus’s resurrection and his message has been reduced to a fire insurance plan. A get out of hell free card. In the words of Brian McLaren, “an evacuation plan for the next life.” Many Christians believe this world is going down the drain but the next life is going to be great. The hope for many Christians is just what happens after we die. That doesn’t inspire us in this life, to live fully and to heal and transform the world.

The message of Easter is so much greater than fire insurance, so much more meaningful, so much more powerfully present than that. Here’s what I believe the real message is: Every message about Jesus is a message about all of us—about what it means to be human. It’s a reminder that the hope and renewal we see in Jesus is meant for everyone. This resurrection hope is not just for the future, but now, for this life and this world. And if we open up to this hope, metabolize this hope, it changes everything. It changes how we experience every second of the day. But how?

Well first let’s wrestle with the reality of this life. I have compassion for folks who have reduced the gospel to what happens after we die because this life is so full of suffering. So much of human life seems so hard, so tragic, so short, and so sad. If Christ is risen, why has there been nonstop war around the world? Why is there so much injustice and division? Why are the poor oppressed? If Christ is risen, why is there so much suffering? It really doesn’t make any logical sense. Is the resurrection something that just happened once, in his body, but not in ours? Is it just a hope for the next life?

I believe the resurrection of Christ proclaims that the final judgment has already taken place. It’s not something to fear or avoid. God’s ultimate judgment is this: God will have the final say! And the final say is resurrection! Easter assures us that there are no dead ends—ultimately, everything will be redeemed, and nothing will conclude in tragedy or crucifixion. Darkness will not have the final say. Love will win. Light will win.

Naturally, we look around—at the news, at the world, at everyday life—and we’re tempted to think, “No, that can’t be true. That sounds like Pollyanna thinking.” And yet, time and again, new life emerges for those who are open to seeing it and willing to engage with the ever-present mystery of resurrection. 

It is the people who have metabolized this message that have been the world changers and world healers. Those that live through the lens that love wins, love will always ultimately win, that confidently stride into the darkness and bring the morning dawn with them.  I think about Gandhi who said, “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always.” 

Or I think about MLK, facing systemic racism and oppression who said, “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.” 

Over and over again, it is those who have breathed in the heart of the message of Easter, that is true for all of humanity, who became the great healers.

Easter is the feast of hope. Again, this is the feast that says God will have the last word and that God’s final judgment is resurrection. God will turn all that we destroy and hurt into new life and beauty. 

What the resurrection reveals more than anything else is that love is stronger than death.  In the words of Richard Rohr, “To be a Christian is to be inevitably and forever a person of hope. God in Christ is saying this is what will last: my life and my love will always and forever have the final word.” So as we look at the world in all its brokenness, all that makes us anxious or even despair… we are invited to shift our gaze to the resurrection. To realize that God will heal what is wounded and resurrect all that has died.

This isn’t just abstract theology. This impacts our daily lives. It means that when we are in pain, when we are suffering, it will pass. And not only that, but if we open to hope, that suffering is transformed into something beautiful.

Let me give you a personal example – I was a 3rd culture kid, someone who was raised in a culture other than their parents or the culture of their nationality. Before my first birthday my family moved to Japan. After that, we moved to Taiwan. I returned to the states just before starting the 6th grade. I was so excited for the first day of school and ran out with my backpack to the bus stop. One thing I was unaware of was that the fashion in Taiwan was about five to ten years behind the trends in the US.  I stepped onto the school bus wearing Puma shorts, OP socks pulled up to my knees, and multi-colored wrist bands.  I still bathed a couple times a week and would roll out of bed without thought of a hairstyle (it was true bed head).  When the bus pulled up and I walked on, it was like one of those scenes in an old western when a stranger walks into the saloon. All the talking stopped and everyone was staring at me. The kids on the bus wore corduroy pants, Izod shirts, and had obviously showered and gelled their hair that very morning.  A boy named Jeremy looked at me with a sneer and said, “What is wrong with your hair?” Everyone on the bus erupted in laughter and while externally I tried to laugh too, inside I was dying. It was clear I did not fit in and I didn’t understand the rules of American culture. When the school day ended, the first words out of my mouth were a declaration to my parents that we needed to go to the mall ASAP and purchase corduroys and Izods. 

From this point on, I always felt like an outsider who tried to dress up to fit in.  The facades I developed became more complex as I never felt at home. By the time I was 17, I was deeply struggling. I looked fine on the outside; Lacrosse player at St. Andrews episcopal prep, a cute girlfriend, some friends. But on the inside I was miserable and I started to wrestle with the question, “Is life worth living?” I resonated with the words of Jean Paul Sartre who wrote, “Man is a useless passion.” I had all of these feelings and longings for life but they were never met and I was in a dark space. I remember the day that changed everything; February 5th, 1990. A friend of mine walked up and said, “Greg, Ive been praying for you.” Now this was in the Washington, DC area, not the Bible Belt. People didn’t say things like that, particularly a 17 year old boy to another 17 year old boy. It was strange to me but I was touched. I asked him why he was praying and he shared his faith journey with me. I considered myself an atheist and that religion was just a crutch for the weak who couldn’t handle the realities of life (unlike me who was doing so well).

As he shared his story, something incredible happened. One second I did not believe in God and then next, I knew there was a God who loved me infinitely. It was almost a physical sensation of warm waves of love washing over me. It was such a profound experience that it defined the trajectory of my whole life. All I wanted to do was explore this mystery we call God and invite other people into the dance. I felt such a sense of connection and belonging with God, that over time my old wounds of feeling like an outsider started healing. And I noticed something else. My heart was automatically drawn to other people who felt like outliers and outsiders. I started up friendships with lots of folks who felt they were on the fringes and soon, as we walked together through life, they felt a deep sense of connection and healing and I did too!

Hope and a sense of belonging transformed my wound into a super power. A super power of compassion and empathy. Opening to the resurrection lens creates space for our deepest wounds to become our deepest strengths. 

This reminds me of the lyrics of the beautiful Leonard Cohen song, Anthem, where he sings, “Ring the bells that still can ring, Forget your perfect offering, There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” This life, our lives are full of cracks. But those cracks are where the light of God flows in and if we open to it, experience resurrection and new life.

I spent my earliest years in Japan and my mother is a potter. She taught me about a style of Japanese pottery that has stuck with since I was a kid. The style is called Kintsukuroi. When a pottery bowl or glass falls to the ground and shatters, the artist gathers up all the pieces and painstakingly glues them back together using gold or silver lacquer. The result is a functional bowl that is even more beautiful for having been broken. In this same way, with the hope of Easter, the joy of the resurrection, we can know that whatever our pain, whatever our suffering, it will be transformed into something even more beautiful for having  been broken.

As St. Paul says in the book of Romans, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.” I don’t think that’s just talking about heaven. That’s glory about to be revealed here and now, in this life, in this world.

Today we celebrate hope, life and the power of community. We’re all in this together. The deep cynicism and growing division in our country—and throughout the world—show what happens when hope fades from view. When the world feels hopeless, we internalize that despair. But Easter offers us a collective hope. When we declare “He is risen”, we’re declaring that death has been overcome for everyone. It’s not only about Jesus—God’s promise extends to all of humanity. What happened in Christ will happen in us. Easter invites us to the glorious hope that in the end, all will be radically OK. Or in the words of Julian of Norwich, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Amen.