The tomb is empty—but the work is not finished.

Easter morning breaks not with trumpets or thrones, but with Mary, grieving, exhausted, still carrying the scent of death in her hands. And yet, she is the first to hear the news: He is risen.

Resurrection doesn’t erase suffering—it honors it.
It doesn’t bypass the cross—it rises from it.

Jesus returns not to cast blame, but to call us forward: to Galilee, to the streets, to the margins, to the work.

The stone has been rolled away not just to reveal an empty tomb, but to open the way to a new world.

We find ourselves again in the shadows of empire, where Jesus whispered his last words, “I am thirsty,” and “It is finished,”—Love meeting the full weight of oppression.

As we move through Holy Week—through betrayal, mock trials, public executions, and systemic violence—we are not merely recalling an ancient story. We are witnessing it unfold in real time.

In a political climate marked by growing authoritarianism, anti-immigrant policies, anti-Black and anti-POC violence, anti-trans legislation, voter suppression, and the coordinated rollback of hard-fought civil rights, we recognize the signs. This is a Good Friday moment.

On the night of betrayal, Jesus doesn’t posture with power—he kneels with purpose. He takes off his robe, wraps a towel around his waist, and washes the feet of his disciples. Including the one who will betray him. Including the one who will deny him. Including the ones who will scatter and hide.

This is the kind of leadership the Church—and the world—desperately needs right now.

Not leadership obsessed with control or comfort. Not leadership that avoids conflict or cowers behind polite neutrality. But leadership that risks proximity to pain. Leadership that bends low in humility, that sees dignity in every person, and that uses its power not to dominate but to liberate.

By midweek, the shadows are already gathering. The palm branches have been waved, the tables turned over. And now the movement slows. We find ourselves in the stillness between Hosanna and Crucify.

Holy Wednesday is a day of tension. Of hushed whispers. Of backroom deals and quiet betrayals. It’s the moment when the cost of justice begins to feel real, when the powers that be start to push back against love that refuses to play by their rules.

I went to Mexico recently to drop off supplies for migrant families. Afterward, I stopped by Abby’s Bakery, a small business that had just been raided. It was closed. Families were traumatized, scared. I held them in prayer that day—and I still do.

This work of loving our neighbors, especially our migrant siblings, is deeply important to me. The policies we see today are hurting families and entire communities. Sometimes, the fear is so heavy, but we know we are not alone. Many of us will keep showing up. Because we believe… we act.

On this particularly cold winter day, spring seems far away. In the midst of unrelenting climate and political disruption, a world shaped by justice and peace feels nearly impossible to imagine. But I’m working to trust the rhythms of the seasons and the wisdom of the liturgical calendar, and so I seek the lessons this Lenten season can offer, lessons gleaned from other years’ seasonal journeys around the sun that assure me I can trust that something new is even now waiting to be born.

As we embrace the journey of dismantling racism within the Methodist Federation for Social Action, it is clear that we have a monumental task ahead—not just in our conversations as the Racial Audit Implementation Team, but in confronting the ways our institutions, even with good intentions, have upheld the practices of the majority culture.

For too long, the church has been silent and complicit in both subtle and overt forms of racism. People have left the church because it has boldly professed that all are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), yet remained silent in the face of injustice. We proclaim that there is no longer slave nor free (Galatians 3:28), yet we have been complacent in systems of oppression.

Every so often, I get the chance to drive to the beach, and to get to the beach from where I live in Atlanta, you go down the interstate and at some point you sort of take a left and drive through the countryside to get to the beach, and that part of the country is called the coastal plain, and it is very very flat. If there are no trees, you can see just about all the way to the horizon, and there are fields of things growing in the sandy soil, fields that stretch as far as the eye can see. I'm from a hilly place, from the Piedmont region of Georgia - so I get a strange little thrill being in different kinds of environments. A long stretch of flat terrain might seem boring - it might be, well, plain, but it just seems like something different might be possible there. I like the idea of a place where everything is just out in the open, in full view, plain for all to see.

Hope in the midst of bleak reality - these are the words of Palestinian Christian theologians, written 15 years ago, which I read for the first time this past devastating year. Perhaps these words speak to you this Lent, as you walk your personal road to Gethsemane; as our nation hurtles down a highway of cruelty and greed.

I and others in my church have been on our own journey, finding ways to talk together and learn together about the long struggle for Palestinian liberation.  We are an urban church with a commitment to social justice, yet in the fall of 2023, ours was a tentative voice about the genocide unfolding in Gaza, quieted by concerns about being seen to be antisemitic.  Many of us, like many in the USA, were also woefully behind in our education and exposure to the history of Palestine.

I served a church in Washington DC during the time that “Ashes to Go” became a thing. Colleagues would post selfies of themselves at a busy subway station on Ash Wednesday in collar and stole, offering ashes to anyone who would like them. All the cool clergy were jumping on board to participate in their own communities. Me? Well, once again, I was not cool. I was never cool in school and I wasn’t joining the cool clergy taking to the streets to offer ashes and an invitation to come to church for Lent.

The woman of Samaria witnesses to us that we belong precisely because we are wonderfully different and that God in Christ, our Wonderfully Different invites us to become agents of change for the wholeness of our cosmos.

Take heart, family. Take courage. Prepare for joy. Because God is doing great things in us, through us, and even when we are lost in the wilderness.

Humbleness is a characteristic that has supported the existence of Indigenous communities for thousands of years. In all simplicity, all because it limits the violence of hubris and exploitation.