Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

By Scott Baker

As one of the most unorthodox and weird Holy Weeks rolls by (a fitting end to a season of Lent that has been equally weird), we can’t help but to fix our eyes on Easter day.

As I sit in my office in my home and write this article, I realize I have not been out of my house for many days. I couldn’t help but think about that first Easter day and the disciples cowering behind closed doors out of fear. “When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked out of fear …(John 20:19).”

Jesus comes and stands among them to show them that he is proof of a new and a renewed existence. He stands among them to who them that just because you go through Good Friday isn’t the end of existence, but that new life lies on the other side of the horror of the cross and Golgotha. Jesus comes and stands among them and pronounces peace in the midst of their fear. He pronounces peace; the harmony and serenity that they had so longed for. He pronounces peace in that, they are to have peace among themselves. He pronounces peace in the wake of his victory over sin and death. He pronounces peace between humanity and God the Father. I also believe he was calling them to a mission of being peacemakers in the world. To carry on his mission of reconciliation and healing to a hurting and broken world.

As we all find ourselves behind closed doors, perhaps not out of fear but out of a concern for our fellow citizens, I find it helpful and hopeful that there will dawn a day when we will fling wide our doors to a new and hope-filled day. A day when there is no longer a threat of COVID-19. A day when we don’t have to live in fear of contamination and being a carrier of this horrible virus. That day has not dawned yet.

In the meantime, we pray for our world and those who suffer and those who care for them.

In the meantime, we lend a helping hand to our neighbors and any we see in need.

But there will be a day to dawn, hopefully in the not-too-distant future, when we will walk outside our doors to a new life and a new existence. On that day, I think we will experience an Easter moment not known in a very, very long time.

I think, as my foot crosses the threshold out onto my front porch, I very well may shout that quintessential Easter anthem, “Alleluia! Praise the Lord!”

THE REV. SCOTT BAKER is the rector of Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Franklin. Contact him at 562-4542.