Easter Breaks Every Barrier

On Holy Monday, a group of Episcopalians, Lutherans, Roman Catholics and others joined together at Good Samaritan Episcopal Church for a Service of Lament and Witness. From Good Sam, we walked to the nearby trolley station, which connects all the way south to the US-Mexico border, for a time of public witness there. We witnessed to God’s love for every human being and God’s hope for a renewed and transformed world.

Sadly, though, that transformation seems far away, because we live in a world of barriers between human beings, built to exclude and separate and break down relationships. If you cross the border into Tijuana and look at the border wall, you will see high, slatted fences that go right out into God’s ocean. That wall stretching out into the shining ocean seems to me to be a symbol of all the ways humans enforce exclusion, distance and difference, and fail to create space for inclusion, compassion, and love.

During Holy Week and Easter, we Christians remember that Jesus came to break down barriers – barriers between God and human beings, and barriers that separate people from each other. Jesus commanded us to love God and love our neighbors. He lived a life of justice, peace, healing, and reconciliation. He willingly gave himself up to suffering and death, to open up a pathway of reconciliation between heaven and earth. He commanded us to live lives of hope – hope founded not on optimism that things will always go our way – we can look at the world and see that’s not true. Rather, we live in hope founded on our personal experience of Christ, who died and yet was raised, and who commands us to model our lives on his, to share God’s love with the world.

This Easter, we remember that on his way to resurrection and glory, Jesus walked the path of suffering and death. Therefore as Christians, we do not turn away from suffering – we enter into it, as Jesus did, we embrace those who are in need and trouble, we offer hope and comfort to the vulnerable and lonely. God tells us not to look away, not to practice our religion in private without seeing the truth of suffering in the world. Instead, God tells us to loose the bonds of injustice, to let the oppressed go free, to feed the hungry and to shelter those without homes. When we do, we bear witness to God’s command to love each other as Christ has loved us – self-offering, self-giving, offering our hearts and minds for the sake of Jesus, the risen Christ we celebrate this day.

On Easter, we pray that the day will come when barriers between people will fall and all nations will live in peace, with abundant life for all, in a world where the highest value is love between humans, creation, and God. We remember that Jesus has broken the ultimate barrier – between humans and God, between earth and heaven, between life and death. This Easter, we rejoice because Jesus has invited us to share with him in eternal life.

In Christ,

Bishop Susan Brown Snook