Grace and Peace to you from Jesus Christ! 

If you’re reading this on the day it is sent out, then may God bless your Good Friday remembrance, and may you sit well in the ashes of death, knowing that the promise of resurrection is soon to come. 

If, by chance, you chose to close your computer and let it, too, lay in the tomb for three days, then Happy Easter! May you find that your joy—that determination of Spirit that resides within us all and urges us forward when the world seeks to halt our progress?—may that joy find fulfillment in your celebration of the risen Christ! 

We are gearing up for our Holy Week and Easter celebrations right now. We are preparing to wave palms, pray in the garden, hide amongst the crowds at the trial, and hide our faces in shame at the sight of the cross. Then, as is right and proper for a campus community, we will scatter away from each other, many of us going to occupy the familiar spaces of our families of origin and finish the proper celebrations for this high holy time. 

But, as many of you know, that is not where our Easter celebrations will stop. On Monday, we will gather outside (weather permitting) of the chapel and proclaim to all who will listen that Jesus is risen, He is risen indeed! Our cries of hosanna will be replaced with shouts of alleluia, and we will join as a community to lift our voices in prayer, praise, and song. 

And, as many of you know, that is still not where our Easter celebrations will stop. For in many ways, the Easter season continues through the fall for our community. Finals will come, the semester will end, and commencement will be here long before we move to Pentecost, which means that green—the next liturgical color this community will experience—will not make its debut for TLU until August. In the same way that every Sunday is a mini-Easter for the people of God, the open-endedness of our cycles of life and worship leave us shouting alleluias long after everyone else has moved on to tongues of flame. 

There is something holy about this, and we want to invite you to experience it with us. Whether you can come to visit the school or jump online for a chapel service or something else creative and Spirit-inspired, you are invited to engage in this open-ended Easter with us this year. 

May our shouts of “He is risen indeed!” and “Alleluia!” echo throughout this campus and our world. 

Amen.