This week more than most weeks we are living in two worlds yet the sacred story and our story are the same. We entered Jerusalem Palm Sunday with Jesus to the sounds of “Hosanna.” We were certain everything would work out. All our doubts and suspicions about human failings and the dark side of our political institutions faded amid the cries.

But Friday is coming. Hosanna will turn to lamentation.

What’s important about this week is not that we observe what happened 2000 years ago but that we claim the drama in us and in our world so that both might be resurrected. Easter is less a noun than a verb. “Christ is Risen. We are Risen.” But to get there we have to be changed and to become agents of change in the world. Let’s remember that nothing is the same after that Sunday. There’s an earthquake between the old and the new. It’s a new age and a new world.

As I have been thinking about this, oddly enough what came to me is a small book by Paul Tillich (I know, I need to get out more), Love, Power, and Justice. Because it’s Tillich it’s not beach reading and I haven’t read it in decades, but what it offers is a framework of what corporate resurrection might look like. I mean what if the world is made new? How would that operate?

Love is our motive. It’s what drives us. It’s what connects us to one another. It’s what opens our heartsso that we don’t see one another as strangers or as threats but as friends in the deepest sense. Love moves us to communion and community. It’s what prevents us from dragging people off planes or fixating on walls or any of the other acts of separation that are driven by fear. The Easter world is new. Mary Magdalene and the Risen Christ are back in the garden and she hears her true name for the first time.

Justice is our aim. Justice is about who has what. You cannot love your brother and sister and watch them starve or live a diminished life without responding. In a new world, all the rules are open for renegotiation. I have been privileged to go to India many times and I do so not for the Indian people but to cleanse my vision and open my heart. Because being there alerts me that my worth as a human being is not connected to my monetary worth. I realize that I have a hard time going to the Lord with open arms because I have identified with my things. In a world of abundance, justice makes us ask why so many have so little. Easter is not about our private resurrection; Easter is about a new world.

And then power. When love is in our heart and justice has become our objective, power is what enables us to become agents of transformation. However, power without the motive of love or the intention of justice is destructive because it’s about fear and ego. The world cannot change without the exercise of power. Remember, Paul was no wimp. But we must be honest with ourselves before we act.

I know this isn’t my typical reflection and I know it doesn’t come off as a sweet Easter message, but looking at the world around me, I don’t want to celebrate Easter and then move on. I yearn for a new world. I hope for resurrection. For that to happen love and justice and power must be connected to the love, grace, and mercy of the Lord.

May it be so.

+Porter