It is so easy to despair. And despair itself is so seductive. Maybe because despair is sneaky-it's there before you know it. Or maybe because so often the rational response to a situation is despair. Your computer crashes and two weeks of work are lost. The pain in your back is not only causing you excruciating pain right now, the doc says it will only get worse. Your great accomplishment of graduating from sixth grade pales in comparison to the certain knowledge that you've got six more years in school before you are a grown-up. Sometimes it feels as if everything is unraveling around you, no matter how hard you or anyone else works. No sooner do you get the dishes done than you've got to cook another meal, and don't get me on trying to keep the mud off the rug! It's everything. World events, your employment situation, keeping up with the work around the farm, the kids getting sick one after the other.

Entropy is the defining movement of the universe. Everything has a built-in slowing down. Clocks get rewound, batteries need recharging, floors need resweeping, vaccinations need boosters. What is the point?! And into this, comes a God whose greatest surprise, whose best trick yet, is that hate is not stronger than love. Happy Easter. Christ is risen.

God is not in the despair business. While there are a lot of emotions attributed to God in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, despair is not one of them. Sure, God gets angry and says that Israel deserves the trash heap. But for some reason, God never just plain gives up on either Israel in particular or humanity in general. God is always working to redeem humanity. Today proves it.

One of my colleagues refers to God as "the eternal optimist." You know, as if God keeps hoping that humans will behave differently this time. It is my friend's opinion that the cross (and Good Friday) wasn't so much God's plan for redemption as it was a consequence of human sin. She says (and I think this will change your understanding of Easter) that Jesus didn't die for our sins. Jesus died because of our sins. What that means is that Easter-the resurrection of Jesus the Christ-is God's radical statement that we get another chance. God gives us one more chance. No wonder we say that God is not in the despair business.

That is such good news. But it also has important implications for us. Ever since the beginning of God's relationship with humans, God has been saying that sacrifice-killing things to make things right with God-has not been God's first choice. In that great passage in Micah, the God of Israel says, "I'm not interested in your sacrifices, in your grandiose gestures. You know what I want." Do you remember what that is? "To do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God." We sing that as a song, we cross-stitch that and put it on our walls, we calligraphy it and put it on our bulletins covers. God wants right living, not sacrifice. Jesus-the incarnation of God, the most understandable revelation of God, the most clear statement of who God is-Jesus is God's ultimate statement about right living. Jesus is God's visual aid for what humanity was created to be. Humans took that example and nailed it to the cross. "Thanks God. So this is what you wanted humans to look like, the kind of relationship you wanted to have with us."

This is a totally different understanding of the cross. Try to understand that Jesus' death on the cross was God's emphatic way of saying, "No more killing to get it right with me. What I want is right living." The animal sacrifices of Judaism were the ancient equivalent of what we moderns do when we decide, "We'll just send a check." A check is so much less demanding, so much simpler, than putting our hands and feet where our mouth is.

As Christians, we are people who believe in resurrection. We don't "believe" in the death of Jesus on the cross-although Easter is meaningless without Good Friday. We don't stake our lives on the fact that Jesus died. A lot of really "good" people have died. We stake our lives on the resurrection of Jesus. And-here's the amazing thing-we are willing to stake our lives on God's resurrection of us, too. We actually believe in the possibility of new life for ourselves. .

That comes from the first Easter morning, the first message to the first people to suspect that something was up with this empty tomb. What does the angel tell the women? Three imperative statements: come, see, go tell. It's the same message for us today. Come, to the empty tomb. The empty tomb is God's sign that you are no longer enslaved to sin and death. See for yourself-experience-the risen Savior, the one who calls you to life. Then, go and tell the others. Come, see, go. Come (death no longer has a hold on you). See (this is first-hand experience). Go (you can't keep this a secret).

This is not a story that is credible. The guy who was dead is now alive. Are you gonna believe this? Jesus was truly, irrefutably dead. He is now alive. God refuses to let the cross have the last word. If you were on the high school debate team, you would not win this one. You could not prove Jesus' resurrection in a court of law. The empty tomb does not prove anything, but it is a sure sign. God gives us one more chance. You can stake your life on it. You have got to stake your life on it. Our passage in Colossians today gives us a simple message: just as Jesus' resurrection changed him forever, so his resurrection changes us.

The story is told of St. Patrick and the Irish Druids on Easter Eve. For Patrick, it was the evening before the celebration of the resurrection of his Lord, but for the Druids, it was the celebration of their festival of fire. By law, all fires in the land were extinguished to be re-lighted by the ceremonial fire at Tara. The land was dark, when to the horror of the king and Druid priests, Patrick's Easter vigil fire became visible on the Hill of Slane. Patrick's fire was blasphemous, illegal, and punishable by death. "If that fire is not put out tonight," the king said, "it will burn forever." Patrick's fire was not put out, and he appeared before the court on Easter morning to give witness to the fire that continues to shine, even today, even in Oregon.

The Easter fire we light will always be a threat to the culture in which we live, because it testifies to the "one more chance" that God gives us. It stands against despair. Such optimism does not make any sense. Such a relentless imperative to redeem the very ones who continue to diss God is a threat to the way things are. Entropy and despair will not have the final say in the universe. "Jesus Christ is the light of the world, the light which no darkness can overcome."

                                    Christ is risen! Hallelujah!