Let us live, think, love like Easter people

In anticipation the Easter celebration, I found myself humming the hymn that begins with the phrase, “Easter people, raise your voices.” Really, I should have been humming something more appropriate for Holy Week, something more mournful and penitent, like “Ah, Holy Jesus,” since I hadn’t experienced Maundy Thursday or Good Friday at that point. But it’s funny how the mind works.
Instead of sticking with penitence, my mind jumped to the happy ending of the story, the part filled with trumpets, lilies and alleluias. It’s certainly a lot more comforting to meditate on resurrection and new life than on suffering and death by crucifixion.
Actually, I wasn’t focused much on trumpets and lilies but imagining what it might mean spiritually to live as Easter people. How would our lives and our churches be changed by acting out of the truth that the hymn proclaims?
“Every day to us is Easter, with its resurrection song.”
Surely, there would be no need for so much of the despair and doubt that fills the minds of Christians if we woke each day reminding ourselves that this day the Lord has made is Easter with its resurrection song. Then, better yet, what if we actually lived out that truth in the hours that followed?
At the depths of our faith in the risen Christ is our belief that his suffering and death by crucifixion and his resurrection from the empty tomb changed everything from that day forward. No longer can Christians see the world the same way as before the resurrection of Jesus Christ. No longer are we be the same people we once were. Now we are Easter people!
That doesn’t mean we see everything through rose-colored glasses. It means that in the midst of all the hardships life contains, we hold out hope in the transformative power of God in Jesus Christ. As the hymn also proclaims:

“Fear of death can no more stop us from our pressing here below.
“For our Lord empowered us to triumph over every foe.
“Alleluia! Alleluia! On to victory now we go.”

As Easter people, we cling to both the cross and the empty tomb, for together they remind us that through Christ, we are victorious over all that the world fears—war, disease, oppression, death. Nothing difficult or destructive that comes to us in life can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Nothing!
In the days that follow in this season, let’s live like Easter people. Pray like it! Sing like it! Serve like it! Love like it!
May the world shout “alleluia!” in response.