The meaning of the Resurrection is deep and wide and exhaustible, a mystery that is fertile with life-giving, soul-renewing power.

In our faith, we see in Jesus – in his life, in his teaching, in his very being through time and space – we see the embodiment of God’s Love Supreme.

Through Jesus’ confrontation with the powers of evil in this world, and through his crucifixion we witness the horrors of what humanity can do, not only to each other, but to God Godself. And through Jesus’ Resurrection we have revealed that none of this at all diminishes the power of God’s Love Supreme, but in fact reveals its power to rise again unconquered, more powerful than sin or death.

In the mystery of the Resurrection we have the startling assertion that, despite the worst we can do, God does not give up on this world, God does not give up on humanity, God does not give up on you, or me, or anyone.

What I want to do this Easter morning is to invite you to reflect on this question: Where do you find evidence of resurrection in our midst, evidence that God does not give up on us?

What I’ll do is share with you some of that ways that I, for one, find evidence of the truth of our resurrection faith, evidence of tangible embodied ways that our Holy Creator, the Love Supreme does not give up on this world, does not give up on humanity, does not give up on any of you, or any one (even me, thank God).

Now, like dear Mary Magdalene in the Resurrection story from the Gospel of John we just heard, it can be hard for us to recognize the Resurrected Christ, even before our very eyes – the reality is so startling, so against our expectations, against the story we tell about how things work in this tragic world. Perhaps like Mary Magdalene, we just may mistake the Resurrected Christ for a cemetery gardener, a humble and diligent worker tending to the seeds of new and renewed life in the midst of death; a resurrection worker, you could say.

First: One way I find evidence that God does not give up on this world.

In 1946 the United States government forcibly removed the 167 Micronesian inhabitants of a cluster of coral islands in the Pacific Ocean called Bikini Atoll. Their King, named Juda, submitted, saying “We will go believing that everything is in the hands of God.”*

The U.S. Military then used Bikini Atoll to test nuclear weapons during the first decade of the Cold War. This culminated in the detonation, in 1954, of the largest bomb the U.S. ever exploded before or since, a thermonuclear or fusion device. The explosion caused everything around it to reach temperatures of 99,000°F, incinerating two islands, obliterating all life above and below the waters in what had been until moments before an exquisite and ancient coral reef teeming with a flourishing ecosystem of marine life that thrived for countless generations.

The bomb left behind a crater a mile wide and 260 feet deep – utterly bereft of life and massively polluted – a radioactive graveyard.

A little more than 50 years later, marine biologists returned to check out what happens in the aftermath of the most destructive force that human invention has unleashed on the world. What they found is one of the more spectacular coral reef ecosystems in the world. Bikini Atoll is full of ocean life again.

Now, you wouldn’t want to eat a fish from there, and it’s not quite back up to its prior levels of biodiversity. But what had been a crater of death the likes of which the world had never before seen, had, in just a few decades, become a sanctuary for new life. The crater left by the crater in fact has served as a protective container, a crucible, for a renewed ecosystem, reseeded by tiny coral larvae that drift on ocean currents.**

These little resurrection workers, you could say, participate with Christ in showing that the God of Creation does not give up on this world, despite what we may do to it, despite the scars that evil leaves behind.

For this I say “Halleluiah!” It may be a broken, but it is a holy “Halleluiah!”

God does not give up on the world.

Neither does God give up on humanity.

Poignant evidence of this came for me recently from an event I was able to attend a month or so ago, with an organization called Roots. This is an organization jointly run by Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank. They’ve created one of the few community spaces where Israelis and Palestinians can come together to simply get to know each other and share life.

They’ve developed a practice of listening to each other speak about their lives in a way that’s not about debate or even dialogue, but simply listening. By giving each other space and time to share about their lives, and simply listening to each other, they have learned to witness the humanity of someone whose experiences and perspectives may be very challenging to one’s own understanding of the world. These folks at this event shared their own stories about how having the courage to listen to someone one has considered one’s enemy has challenged their hearts to grow so that, as they like to say, “Two truths can live in one heart, so that two peoples can live in one land.”

Now, their work is very hard in any time, and it is extremely hard right now, of course. But these folks from Roots expressed a tenacious hope that if they keep at it, and keep at it, the time will come when a future generation of peacemakers will have the opportunity to make their shared homeland a peaceful and just place for all.

I left the event with a humbling sense that God is always at work, seeding peacemakers among every generation of every population, whether we are aware of it or not.

These resurrection workers participate with Christ in showing that God does not give up on humanity, despite the horrors we can inflict on each other or the scars evil leaves behind. 

For this I say “Halleluiah!” It may be a broken, but it is a holy “Halleluiah!”

God does not give up on humanity.

Neither does God give up on you, or on me.

Here’s where I find evidence of that:

It’s been said that if you want to see Jesus at work at a church, your best bet is not in fact to show up in the sanctuary on Sunday morning, but rather to go to the church basement on a Friday night.

In other words, go to a 12-step recovery group (especially if you qualify).

This is where you’re likely to find evidence of a God who does not give up on people; evidence of a God who does not confine people to being only who we are when we’re at our worst; evidence of a God who does not define people by the worst that someone can say about them or the worst that they can say about themselves, but a God who believes in us, even when we may believe in ourselves, believes in everyone’s capacity for new life, for second chances, for growth and maturation through accountability and humility and clarity and unconditional love.

And I’ll tell you I believe most of us are addicted to something, whether or not there’s a recovery group for it, some way we’re inclined to seek salvation in all the wrong places, that’s doing harm to ourselves or others. We’re all in need of mercy, the mercy of a God who does not give up on us.

So, I thank God for the Resurrection Workers in our midst – and they are all around us – for those who show us the truth that Jesus revealed through his death and Resurrection, that God does not give up on us, God does not give up on humanity, God does not give up on this world.

For this I say “Halleluiah!”

Thanks be to God.

*From a reference in the Wikipedia article on Nuclear Testing at Bikini Atoll: Niedenthal, Jack. “A Short History of the People of Bikini Atoll”. Archived from the original on June 25, 2007. Retrieved August 7, 2013.

**From “Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape” by Cal Fly, pp. 24-26.  

Delivered Easter Sunday, March 31, 2024, by Rev. Nathaniel Mahlberg at the United Church of Christ at Valley Forge.