The Easter Moment | April 5, 2026 | Rev. Dr. Kathryn Benton
- The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples
- Apr 5
- 5 min read
I’m a-gonna tell you ‘bout the comin’ of the judgement,
Fare thee well, fare thee well.
I’m a-gonna tell you ‘bout the comin’ of the judgement,
Fare thee well, fare thee well.
In that great getting’ up morning,
Fare thee well, fare thee well.
There’s a better day a-comin’, fare thee well, fare thee well.
There’s a better day a-comin’, fare thee well, fare thee well.
This song was going through my head and I just couldn’t shake it. On this Easter Sunday I want to get up and dream of a better day a-comin’…one in which there is no war…one in which the hope of the tree can dominate my thoughts…instead of endless war, oppression…fascism even…and endless consumerism paired with greed that is destroying the people and destroying the whole planet. I want to be in this Easter moment…to be with this story that has the potential to give us strength and hope…to give us a way to overcome the vicissitudes of the present…the injustice and the suffering…even of such an agony as Jesus on the cross…a lynching…of the injustice of his crucifixion reflected in the hymn Were you there?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh, Oh, it causes me to tremble, tremble…
This was the song that Thurman’s delegation to visit Mohandas Gandhi sang, at his request. It highlights the power present in the witnessing…in not dying alone…we also accompany him and, in Thurman’s words enter into the fellowship of His suffering…his trembling. We have, as Thurman points out, …met him in the high places of pain, and claim him as our brother. The resonance of this song was true for Gandhi in India and so many people all over the world, cutting through differences…of religion, culture, class, language. Thurman says that the mystery of the cross is found deep within the heart of the experience itself. It is a universal suffering.
Yet we know this is not the end of the story…there is the element of expectation…expectation of the coming of judgement…of the time when that hope finds its resonance in the present, erupting from the middle of the experience itself. Thurman wrote:
So long as you recognize that no event of your life, whatever its character, can imprison you, you will not scale down your aspirations to the level of the facts in your present situation.
Thurman is describing the present situation as the profound suffering of a person who had spent his life counteracting the imperialist, fascist powers of his day…a person who rode into the city on a donkey…the symbol of one who is not privileged, but one of the disinherited. Thurman says that Jesus of Nazareth was able to keep the horizon in view…to let it inform the event with which he was wrestling and Thurman implies that we are able to do this too:
You will let what rides on the horizon constantly inform the event with which you are wrestling, until at last the event itself begins to open up, to yield, to break down, to disintegrate, under the relentless pressure of some force which transcends the event and tutors and informs it.
This is what the Resurrection is all about.
This has something to do with, I think, living in the moment…the Easter Moment. Now, this is not just the resurrection…the rising…the overcoming death, but also the death itself...opening up…yielding…disintegrating. Yet, Thurman says:
Not even death is capable of telling us what it is that God has to say about life. Therefore, I will hang on to my event. I will not accept it as the final and ultimate conclusion. I will hold it against all odds until, at last, it disintegrates in my hand because of a quality that is inherent in the very vitality of existence, inherent in the very life of God. I shall not despair. I shall not allow the events of my life to make me their prisoner. I shall believe that life has much more to it than experience disclosed to me. I shall continually believe that God is not through, not merely with life, but with me. I shall not co-operate with Him until through my life there begins to pulse something much vaster and greater than anything that I have ever known before. When I die, I will go down with a shout, because life is not through even in death. Life has an infinite creative possibility. This is what Jesus discloses in his trumpet call, “I am the Resurrection and the Life. The one who believes in me will never die.” This is the growing edge.
I will not allow the events of my life make me their prisoner. I will hold it…until it disintegrates in my hand. We must believe that life has an infinite creative possibility. This truly is the growing edge and the glad surprise… Howard Thurman tells us:
The glad surprise…is the announcement that life cannot ultimately be conquered by death, that there is no road that is at last swallowed up in an ultimate darkness, that there is strength added when the labors increase, that multiplied peace matches multiplied trials, that life is bottomed by the glad surprise.
Take courage, therefore:
When we have exhausted our store of endurance,
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done,
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources,
Life’s full giving is only begun.
Life’s full giving is what makes our lives endurable…and even joyful. Death cannot conquer life – no! This Glad Surprise is that we can endure what seems unendurable.
Thurman finally sums up the meaning of the religion of Jesus this way…
The basic fact is that Christianity as it was born in the mind of this Jewish thinker and teacher appears as a technique of survival for the oppressed. That it became, through the intervening years, a religion of the powerful and the dominant, used sometimes as an instrument of oppression, must not tempt us into believing that it was thus in the mind and life of Jesus. ‘In him was life; and the life was the light of men.' Wherever his spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage; for he announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them.
It has been my experience, as a counselor for many years, that this is true. At least the symbolism of this event has the power to provide fresh courage and to make it clear that the three hounds of hell do not have to rule our lives. Instead, we can hold our event against all odds until…it disintegrates. We do not need to accept it as the final and ultimate conclusion. Indeed, the contradictions of life are neither final nor ultimate.
I’d like to end with the words from the African American Spiritual as interpreted by Dr. Howard Thurman. The words provide a summary, I think, of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, calling him a king, a lord, and a profoundly powerful activist who overcame the powers of the Roman Kingdom. May we celebrate this Jesus, who stood on the side of the disinherited, giving them hope and the tools to navigate life amid the hounds of hell which dog our existence.
He’s King of kings, and Lord of lords,
Jesus Christ, the first and last,
No man works like him.
He built a platform in the air,
No man works like him.
He meets the saints from everywhere,
No man works like him.
He pitched a tent on Canaan’s ground,
No man works like him.
And broke the Roman Kingdom down,
No man works like him.
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