Calvary Episcopal Church
Memphis, Tennessee
THE CHRONICLE
The Second Sunday of Easter
April 11, 1999
Volume 44, No. 15

Life, In All Its Fullness
We are now in the Easter season of the Church year.  It lasts from Easter Day to the Day of (the Feast of) Pentecost, which this year falls on May 23rd. This is the fertile, full, bright, springtime of the year.  In the world of nature, that means being out-of-doors after a long winter; it means picnics, it means baseball.  In the world of the spirit, in the thoughts that come to mind about the Church Year, that means life eternal.  It means that Good Friday does not and cannot defeat us.

Someone said the other day that Christianity is all about hope.  It is a faith of hope.  In the New Testament we hear about those who "have no hope."  This is all about life and death, the meaning of  life and whether or not death is the final word.  For a Christian, Christ is the first and the final Word.

St. Paul said that sin (our imperfection, our inclination to find a good thing and mess it up) is the "sting of death."  Sin is a death in life, a "falling short" of what we yearn to be, God's "good ones."  But neither sin nor death is permanent; neither is the last word.  We grow, we change, we learn, as we move from sin to trust in God.  And so the same with death, all kinds of deaths, including our own bodily end.  Death lays us down but it does not defeat us. 

That is what Easter, and this lovely Easter season, are all about.

~Bill Kolb+