An Easter 2023 Message from Dean Pak
Easter evokes powerful memories of hope and joy for me. It is colored eggs, white lilies, joyous hymns, spring sunshine, a warm breeze, the promise of new beginnings and rediscovered joys. It is a tapestry of colors, music, and the beauties of creation—budding flowers, birdsong, and the greening renewal of the earth—all coming together to evoke a spiritual uplift, an embodied hope, a pathway brimming with expectancy and new possibilities within the seemingly impossible.
The world is desperate for that kind of hope. A hopeful reimagining. A reimagined hope. A clearing away of ugly obstacles to reveal new possibilities. To unveil joy.
And … and the Easter story is not a simple tale tied up in a tidy bow. The story is equally a call to walk with each other and for each other in a wounded world. Deeply grieved, Jesus takes his friends with him to the Garden of Gethsemane. He asks them to remain, to stay awake with him. “Stay with me,” Jesus pleads. “Remain here with me.” “Watch and pray.” Jesus seeks a chaplain. Jesus beckons to communal lament. Jesus bids alert eyes and attuned hearts to bear one another’s burdens, to walk in solidarity, to take that next faithful step when all is lost. Such were the steps of the women, as they clung to one another, as they wept and grieved, as they carried the broken body of their beloved, as they washed him for burial. Such were the steps of a devastated community as they gathered in uncertainty, mourning, and lament—as they gathered, as they gathered together.
[T]he Easter story is not a simple tale tied up in a tidy bow. The story is equally a call to walk with each other and for each other in a wounded world.
To view Easter as primarily about celebratory hope and joy might be to miss a crucial point. Yes, it is about hope and joy, but I daresay it is not meant to be a triumphal story. It is a story about how to be together when the unspeakable happens—to remain with and for each other, to take the next faithful step in an uncertain world, to be reminded that no one should go it alone. It is not a triumphal Jesus—but a risen Jesus still with his wounds—who bids us to a life together in love, solidarity, and radical compassion.
– G. Sujin Pak, dean