This is an extraordinary Easter. Did you attend a virtual service hosted in another city? Perhaps you drove to a service and never got out of your car. Instead of your Easter finest, did you lounge in comfy clothes all day? Christians found new and extraordinary ways to celebrate Easter. This is fitting. Easter is about the extraordinary, the unusual.

Easter celebrates God’s extraordinary love for us. God put perfect love into an ordinary man who was also extraordinarily divine. Jesus did ordinary things in extraordinary ways. His words and hands healed people and made them whole. Jesus took familiar passages of Scripture and uncovered new understandings. Jesus perfectly revealed God’s will. His

Jesus perfectly revealed God’s will. His stories about ordinary things taught unexpected lessons about God’s values: Love, mercy and forgiveness rather than money, power and self-righteousness. Jesus embraced “outcasts and sinners” and made God’s community fully inclusive.

Expectedly, these revelations threatened the establishment and made the powerful and privileged very afraid. The religious leaders went to extraordinary lengths to silence Jesus by execution. Jesus died a cruel death, unjustly convicted of being a seditious traitor. He died by ordinary Roman punishment but what followed was astounding. Jesus said He was the resurrection and the life and in the early hours of Easter He was living proof of the truth of his words.

The extraordinary story of Jesus is meant to grow in our hearts and bring us comfort and peace. Jesus’ whole life from Christmas to Easter is bracketed by the reassurance of angels to “be not afraid”. These words are desperately needed in these days. Fear seems overwhelming.

When the reality of the pandemic set in, I felt fearful. I wanted things to be “normal” and routine. I wanted to worship like we always do. My fear of the changes we needed to make in these unusual times made me angry and unable to think. The mandate to stay at home was inconvenient and hard. Trying to preserve the ordinary in the face of the extraordinary is hopeless.

Matthew writes that the guards at the tomb were so afraid of the extraordinary Easter event that “they became as dead men”. That was me. Good as dead with fear. Fear was the first response to the empty tomb. Fear is our first response to the unknown and unexpected.

The Easter angel says “be not afraid.”

Jesus says, “be not afraid.” This is hard to do. Fear is an intelligent response to the current situation. We fear for loved ones and for our livelihoods. We fear our lives will never return to what we knew. But fear alone brings us nothing.

Easter is about looking beyond fear to trust that Jesus Christ is alive and that God’s love for us remains and that the world is still being redeemed. The impact of Christ’s death for our sin and the unexpected joy of his resurrection overcomes paralyzing fear and dark despair. Jesus Christ is God’s perfect love whose presence casts out our fears and compels us to move towards new light and life.

We have been moved to learn Internet church, do virtual bible study. We have discovered new tools for evangelism and outreach we had overlooked. We are being creative together. In significant ways we have increased our sense of community through new networks of sharing and caring. Jesus is alive in our community working together to remain at home to protect the weakest among us. Healthcare workers show us Jesus’ compassion in their efforts and their tears. Bears, eggs and alleluias bring children Christ’s joy. In this dark, Christ is inspiring us to be extraordinary lights of love.

Easter joy came to those daring to face the tomb to discover it was surprisingly empty of death and void of despair.

Unexpected joy can come to us when we confront this pandemic and its effects with the power of God that Christ reveals to us. We discover Jesus is not in the virus but already at work in the good and loving things being done and in the renewed faith rising up because of this threat.

Our Lord is risen and in His rising He lifts us with Him out of fear into hope. Christ is always going before us, preparing the way for extraordinary love and life.

Easter raises us to have extraordinary expectations that because no sin, no cross, no tomb stood in His way that Easter long ago we can trust no pandemic will stand in His way of grace and mercy for us now. Thanks be to God.