To light a candle in the darkness is to say "I beg to differ."
This week Christians celebrate Easter, the foundation of trust in God's goodness and faithfulness. Easter symbolizes God's victory over the power of fear and death. Christians celebrate that despite the grim reality of much of life, nevertheless a new world is promised, a new hope is given birth, a new possibility is emerging.
Easter faith is found whenever Christians act in face of their fears. Cesar Chavez devoted his life to protecting farmworkers even in the face of death threats and intimidation. Martin Luther King poured out his life in a continual affirmation that nonviolent persistence could change the cold-hearted nature of apartheid and militarism. Dorothy Day opened a house to serve food and offer hospitality to whosoever because she understood we are all God's children.
Every person who serves in a soup kitchen practices holy resistance to those powers that would have us think that segregated wealth is better than commonwealth. Every person who works on behalf of the homeless exhibits the power of resurrection in the face of those powers that would have us cower and become afraid of the almighty law, of the priestly status of property owners.
To resist fear and death is living proof of Christ's resurrection. To incorporate into one's life the holy practices of positive maladjustment to society is living proof that Jesus keeps popping up from the grave in a brand new disguise.
On Easter Sunday many churches will use religious words that have no meaningful content. They will praise Jesus and glory in his rising from death. But the reality is blunt and basic, even if the dead man Jesus walked again through walls, so what? Good for him, but what does that have to do with us? Even if the Creator of the universe reanimated the dead corpse of a first century peasant -- so what?
The real truth of Easter is not about a dead man walking. Rather, it is about people like you and me standing up to our fears and frustrations. Easter faith is to, with firm backbone, resist those forces that try to grind some people up, turn some people into victims, squash some people's dreams, while all the time benefiting from other people's misery. Easter faith is resistance to the power that would segregate us into categories of status, like housed and homeless, and then turn us against each other.
This Easter true worship will happen in congregations that build a bridge between the haves and have-nots. True religion is the actual practice of sharing wealth and assets, networks and time, talent and treasure so that all not only survive, but thrive. True Easter faith resists religious rhetoric through embodying the simple practice of sharing. Let us bury the words and raise up actions.
This week, light a candle and resist.