Be Eastered People - An Easter message from Bishop Lanette Plambeck

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VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:  

The first Easter morning did not begin in triumph. 

The world into which Jesus was raised from the dead was neither peaceful nor orderly. It was a world of empire and occupation. Roman soldiers stood watch over restless and vulnerable populations. Taxes pressed the poor. Religious leaders struggled to preserve identity and faith under political pressure. Violence was public and common. Crucifixion was Rome’s way of making fear visible. Jesus died, as many others did in that time. Executed by the machinery of empire. Abandoned by frightened friends. Buried quickly before the Sabbath. 

No...that the first Easter morning did not begin in triumph. 

It began in grief. It began with diminished hope, where expectation of what Messiah meant, they feared, would not be realized. Life as they had hoped for...it was not what they were experiencing. In fact, it was counter to the vision of Kingdom on Earth as it is in Heaven 

Think about Matthew 5 – the Beatitudes, Matthew 25 – “Whenever you care for the least of these, you also care for me.” Or even from Micah 6:8 – where we are called to practice mercy, justice, and humility. A posture of God-likeness in the world. 

And that first Easter morning wasn’t about a posture of God-likeness.  

It was a posture of women walking to a tomb while the city was still quiet. They were carrying spices to care for a dead body. They expected nothing except the completion of mourning. They expected to tend to death amid despair. But instead, they encountered the impossible. 

A stone rolled away. 

An empty grave. 

A message that made no sense to their head nor their heart: 

“He is not here. He has risen!" 

Learning these two things, they did not run away, shouting certainty. They ran away trembling. Scripture tells us they were afraid, amazed, and perplexed. 

You see, Easter did not arrive as an explanation. 

It arrived as disruption. And in many ways our own time – this time that we are living in – is not so different from theirs. We live in a world where we look around and can say with certainty, “This is not what God intended or intends."

Where nations struggle and communities divide. 

Where families carry grief and bodies carry illness. 

Where many labor long hours for wages that barely sustain life. 

Where anxiety, loneliness, depression, exhaustion, and despair quietly settle into the people’s bones. 

Some among us live with great stability and comfort. Others live with deep precarity. 

And yet, in this world, just as in that ancient one, the Easter proclamation still breaks open the morning: 

Christ is risen. 

Not as an idea. Not as a metaphor. But as the stubborn, holy claim that death does not have the final word in this. 

The resurrection of Jesus does not erase suffering. It does not instantly solve the conflicts of our time, but it does something just as powerful. It interrupts the story that says the world – marked by war, famine, disease and dis-ease – is irreparable and unredeemable. 

Instead, Easter says, “God is as work, bringing life into places marked by death.” 

Easter says, “Life can emerge from sealed tombs. 

Hope can rise where fear once ruled. 

Love can outlast violence. 

That death does not and will not have final word.” 

This is why the church still gathers, still sings, still dares to proclaim this ancient greeting. 

Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!

And yet, if we are honest, Easter still confounds us. 

We wrestle with it. 

We analyze it. 

We try to explain it. 

Perhaps that is why this prayer by Walter Brueggemann speaks so truthfully to our moment. Please hear these words:

“We are baffled. Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed! We are baffled by the very Easter claim we voice. Your new life fits none of our categories. We wonder and stew and argue, and add clarifying adjectives like 'spiritual' and 'physical.'

But we remain baffled at seeking clarity and explanation. We who are prosperous, and full and safe and tenured. We are baffled and want explanations. 

But there are those, not baffled, but stunned by the news. 

Stunned while at minimum wage jobs. Stunned while the body wastes in cancer. Stunned while the fabric of life rots away in fatigue and despair. Stunned while unprosperous and unfull and unsafe and untenured. 

Waiting only for you in your Easter outfit. Waiting for you to say, ‘Fear not, it is I.’ 

Deliver us from our bafflement and our many explanations. Push us over into stunned need and show yourself to us lively. 

Easter us in honesty. Easter us in fear. Easter us in joy, and let us be Eastered. Amen.” 
    ~Walter Brueggemann 

Did you hear that? 

Let us be “Eastered.” Let us be Eastered, indeed. 

Not merely convinced, but changed. 

Not simply informed, but awakened. 

To be Eastered is to have the stone rolled away in places where it had sealed things shut. It is to feel light slip into the cracks of grief we thought were permanent. It is to hear our names spoken, as Mary did, and suddenly recognize that love is alive and calling us forward. 

To be Eastered is to rise. Not all at once, not perfectly, but with some intention. It is to stand up again in a world that still bears wounds, and yet refuse to let those wounds have the last word. It is to live as people who expect surprise from God, who look at closed doors and wonder what new life might be pressing on the hinges. Who dare to believe that even now, even here, resurrection is already underway. 

To be Eastered is to carry hope not as a fragile idea, but as a living fire, warm enough to comfort, bright enough to guide, bold enough to share. 

It is to become people who say with our lives, “Fear will not define us. Despair will not claim us. Death will not keep us. Because Christ is risen. And in him, we are rising too.” 

So let us be Eastered in our churches and in our streets, in our leadership and in our love, in our weariness and in our witness. 

Let us be Eastered with courage for this moment, with tenderness for one another, and with a joy that refuses to be contained. 

For the tomb is empty. 

The morning is breaking. 

And the Risen Christ is already ahead of us, calling us by name, and leading us into life. 

Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. 

Resurrection blessings, Eastered people.  

Go into the light of this world, as the light of Christ in this world.  

Go and be Eastered people, blessing all those seeking love, light, hope, relationship, seeking Christ. 

The tomb is empty.  

Christ is risen.  He is risen indeed.  

Happy Easter! 

Bishop Lanette Plambeck
Dakotas-Minnesota Episcopal Area
The United Methodist Church