Easter 2025: May Our Strength to Fight Injustice Be Renewed
By, Rev. Marietta Macy, PJN co-moderator
“For I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating,
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy
and its people as a delight.
I will rejoice in Jerusalem
and delight in my people;
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it
or the cry of distress.”Isaiah 65:17-19
In the midst of the grief and horror in our own world, God breaks through yet again with her promise of abundant life for all in this Easter season. As we rejoice and proclaim with Christian’s around the world that, “Jesus is risen!” our alleluias stick in our throats, quelled by the constant news of death, imprisonment, and torture from Palestine to El Salvador. Along with our Jewish and Muslim siblings, for the second year now we have seen our holiest days covered in the blood of Palestinians with news of fresh massacres carried out by Israel. As Israel restricts Christian worshipers from holy sites this week, continues its genocidal bombing of Gaza, and further entrenches the apartheid infrastructure in the West Bank, we will continue to proclaim the good news of the gospel: Nothing, including death itself, can separate us from the love of God and the promise of resurrection.
Easter’s promise of new life is not just for the oppressed, but for the oppressors as well. May this sacred day remind those that think they can kill a will for freedom and dignity through slaughter and terror - you will fall. Resurrection laughs in the face of such death dealing hubris. Power built on taking it from others isn’t sustainable, and systems built on such poor foundations will collapse on themselves eventually. God’s people were faithful in the face of Roman brutality and our ancestors of the faith taught us well. As they did, we will continue to plant, grow, and tend new life in the midst of those ashes.
PJN steering committee member, Rev. Addie Domske writes from Jerusalem saying,
“Much of our time here reminds us of the walk to the cross—where Jesus is ridiculed and broken. It continues to be a broken time for our Palestinian siblings in Jerusalem. And yet. We continue to see glimpses of the resurrection, pockets of a free Palestine. The light of Christ on Saturday did not obey the blockade orders we were stuck behind. Being in Jerusalem this week reminds me that liberation catches fire like the Holy Spirit.”
In a time when too many churches, pastors, and believers are quietly complacent to genocide, we call on our siblings of faith to set their own souls ablaze this year with our firm belief in a Savior who cannot be conquered by death. May our own strength to fight injustice be renewed when we remember that God saw the worst humanity had to offer and let us know that wasn’t the end.
In spite of our capacity for collective brutality and cowardice, God continues to speak love and life to us. As the church, the body of Christ now on earth, called to embody God’s laws of justice, may the fire of the Holy Spirit burn as fiercely in each of us, as in Jerusalem; burning away our distractions and fears to leave pure love and courage. From ancient times to today, the world strives to set up systems of unlimited power and domination to profit the few. But God, from ancient times to today, says that real power is in the tending of our siblings and creation; it’s in loving our neighbor because we can so easily see the divine in them too.
May this year bring safety and peace to our siblings near and far, from the U.S. to Palestine.
