In his Easter message, Dorhauer calls for resurrection of peace, hope, love

In his Easter message, United Church of Christ General Minister and President John C. Dorhauer is calling for a season of resurrection — a resurrection of peace, a resurrection of hope and a resurrection of love. All, he said, are needed in the world and readily available to us.

He spoke of “peace in the world, in our hearts and our communities”; hope for the health of the earth, its people and “what tomorrow can look like”; and love to bridge “deep chasms between political and religious beliefs” and “restore broken relationships.”

“Hello, dear friends in the United Church of Christ. I bring you Easter greetings. I want to begin my brief reflection with words that have sustained me through this season of pandemic. And I want to close this brief reflection with a different set of words that have sustained me through this time of pandemic.

“The first set of words come to us from a deacon of the Coventry Church of the Reformed Church of Great Britain, spoken in 1949 when they were trying to call a new pastor after the church in the town of Coventry had been carpet bombed into oblivion during the second World War. And the deacon said to the pastor they were trying to call, ‘there is nothing in this church that cannot be changed so long as the Gospel is preached in the Kin-dom of God proclaimed.‘

“I’ve held fast to those words throughout the season of pandemic, reminding myself that there is nothing in our church that cannot change so long as the Gospel is proclaimed and the Kin-dom of God is preached. So let’s keep doing that as we have been, regardless of the circumstances. And in this time of Easter season, I am calling for a season of resurrection, a resurrection of peace in the world in our hearts, in our communities.

“As the globe is torn apart by wars in Syria, Myanmar, the South Sudan, other hot spots, and of late Ukraine, we call for a resurrection of and a commitment to peace. We call for a resurrection of hope. It’s two years now, plus, of quarantining ourselves and isolating ourselves to protect us and our loved ones from the pandemic. It’s wearing us down and eroding our commitment to hope about what tomorrow can look like.

“The globe, threatened by warming, and in the call for climate justice, has us all concerned about our future health as individuals, as the human community, and as the planet that we love and occupy. And so I’m calling for a resurrection of hope in and through this time, and a resurrection of love. We all are on our social media platforms, are fed by algorithms that read our political minds and inclinations and continue to feed us political materials that reinforce our biases and identify friends that think the same thing – the way we do.

“All of that and so many other things are creating deep chasms between political and religious beliefs and we need to resurrect love and restore broken relationships. I do pray that this season of Easter sees the resurrection pf peace, a resurrection of hope, a resurrection of love, all of which we are in need of, and all of which, through the resurrected Christ and the movement of Christ’s Holy Spirit, are readily available to us.

“I want to close with these words that also, through this time of pandemic, have grounded me. And they come from the great mystic Julian of Norwich, who said through a hard time of pandemic, ‘All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.’ Indeed Christ is risen. He is risen indeed, and all shall be well.”

Faithfully,
The Rev. John C. Dorhauer
General Minister and President

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