Easter 2025
April 20, 2025
St. Dunstan’s
The Rev. Patricia Templeton
Early this Holy Week a post showed up on my Facebook feed that has stayed in my mind all week. It was by Joel Webbon, the pastor of a large church in Texas.
Webbon describes himself as a hard-core Christian nationalist. He helped author the Project 2025 document that detailed the president’s agenda for his new term, and often has the president’s ear.
The post that I read said this:
“The young men are waking up.
“Women will learn to have a quiet and gentle spirit.
“Or they will learn to be alone.”
The post ends with the Latin words, “Deus Vult,” which means God wills it, a phrase that was often used as a war cry during the crusades, not exactly Christianity’s finest hour.
Not for the first time, I wondered if the so-called “Christian” nationalists have ever actually read the Bible, or know anything about Jesus.
In a bit of irony that I’m sure is beyond Mr. Webbon’s understanding, his declaration that it’s God’s will that women be quiet comes in the week that God entrusts the greatest news of all — that Jesus has risen from the tomb — to women.
Each of the four Gospel accounts of the resurrection offers different details, sees things from different angles.
But they all four agree on one thing. The astounding news of the resurrection is first revealed to the women, and they are entrusted with spreading the news to the men.
Listen again to how Luke’s gospel, which we heard just a few minutes ago, begins.
“On the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared.”
The women had gone to prepare Jesus’ body for burial. But when they arrive the tomb is empty, and an angel gives them the astonishing news, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”
The women run to tell the men what has happened. The men’s reaction was predictable. “These words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”
It is not surprising that the men had to go see it for themselves. In fairness to them, we probably all, male and female, would react that way to such unbelievable news.
What is surprising is that in a time when women were not allowed to be witnesses in court because their word was considered unreliable, God chose them to first spread the news of the resurrection.
God and Jesus never willed or demanded that women be silenced.
That God first entrusted them with this astounding news was no accident. It is a powerful statement that those who the world may not consider worthy, the ones who the powerful wish to silence, are the very ones who are valued in the kingdom of God.
In a time in our nation when the rights and worth of women, Jews, Muslims, people with black or brown skin, immigrants, gays, lesbians, and transgender children of God are under assault from the rich and powerful, God’s message is loud and clear.
Those whom the world too often deems less worthy are those who are first in God’s kingdom.
Almost 2,000 years ago, Jesus’ teachings of love, justice, and inclusion threatened the power structures of the day. The force of the entire Roman empire tried to stop the dangerous idea that all people are worthy of God’s love. The empire left Jesus hanging dead on a cross, a warning to all who would share his gospel.
The empire thought Jesus had been silenced. God had other plans.
“The drama of Holy Week and Easter makes the outrageous claim that the one rendered powerless by the full power of empire is, in fact, the Lord of all creation,” Craig Loya, the bishop of Minnesota wrote this week.
“It makes the outrageous claim that love is the most powerful force in the universe. It makes the outrageous invitation to live together in the face of evil and violence as people of unrelenting love.
“The painful and ever present reality of death is met by the unstoppable power of God’s loving life. It’s a crazy thing to claim,” he admitted, “but I am a follower of Jesus because that crazy claim is the only thing that rings sane in a world of madness.
“It’s a truly bonkers story, and the scandal of it is the only thing that can make us free.”
The power of God’s love has defeated death for Jesus, and for us.
In his Easter message our presiding bishop Sean Rowe reminds us that “as we proclaim the resurrection in our own time and place, let us always remember that the kingdom of God is revealed to us most clearly by those who are dispossessed by the powers and principalities of this world.
“Let us celebrate the joy of Easter by seeking and serving the resurrected Christ in the lives and witness of those who have been silenced, persecuted, and marginalized.”
And remember that as powerful as the empire was, it did not have the last word then. And it will not now.
Deus vult.
God wills it.