Easter people

Because Christ has been raised from the dead, all who trust in him will live with him forever! We are Easter people!

It was that understanding that prompted the young German Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer to pass a note to a fellow prisoner just before he was executed in a Nazi concentration camp April 9, 1945, only days before the allied forces liberated the camp. The note read, "This is the end, for me, the beginning of life."

That understanding led the late Pope John Paul II a few years ago to proclaim: "Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song!" Since then, others have taken up that phrase, Easter people. I know of one congregation that goes by that name. And there is a modern hymn by William M. James titled “Easter People, Raise Your Voices.” At a recent prayer breakfast sponsored by our denomination’s seminary, the dean of the institution offered a prayer that referred to the church as Easter people. You may have heard others use this phrase as well. It’s an especially appropriate designation for believers today.

The first Christians were Easter people, too. In his book Christian Doctrine, Professor Shirley Guthrie observed: "It was not the ethical teachings of Jesus or his noble death that gave birth to the Christian church and made it spread. It was the news of his resurrection... The faith of the first Christians was not founded on arguments about the empty tomb but on their encounter with the risen Christ. It was not from the tomb but from him that they learned what it was all about."