For all of you who celebrated Passover, Chag Sameach! For those of us who celebrate Easter, Blessed Eastertide to you! If you want to experience Middle Church’s Easter Worship Celebration on April 20, 2025, find it. Here.
This is one of my favorite texts in the Bible:
Thus says the Lord,
who makes a way in the sea,
a path in the mighty waters,
17 who brings out chariot and horse,
army and warrior;
they lie down; they cannot rise;
they are extinguished, quenched like a wick:
18 Do not remember the former things
or consider the things of old.
19 I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.
20 The wild animals will honor me,
the jackals and the ostriches,
for I give water in the wilderness,
rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my chosen people,
21 the people whom I formed for myself
so that they might declare my praise. Isaiah 43:16-21
Recently, the artist Alok preached a sermon/poem on this text at Middle Church called I’m About to Do a New Thing. It was gorgeous! This scripture above has stayed with me since my first week in seminary when I was 30-years old. This text, “I’m about to do a new thing, can you perceive it?” was an answer to my existential questions. God was making me new, even in ways I could not understand. God was making a river in the desert of my soul, reminding me every time I revisited this text just how wonderful God is. Able to do more than I can ask or imagine. Able to open seas and liberate their people. Able to make a way out of no way. Able to heal and repair the world. Able to cause a rumble in the earth and tears to gush from the sky. Able to bring new life out of death.
Oh, how I needed God to be this kind of God for my 30-year-old self. I still do. And God has not disappointed. Life has. Circumstances have. Brokenhearted, I’ve often limped along in my faith, but God is always there. All. Ways. There.
So, as I type I am crying because the God who did not start the fire that stole my church; the God who kept our community together for five years without a home; the God who brought Vickie Burns and Mark Reed and Danita Branam and all of my board to the table to stubbornly commit to rebuilding our sacred space in our neighborhood; the God who sent us into the streets to stand up for reproductive justice, Trans rights, and for the liberation of Palestine and all the hostages; the God who can make a river in our dry souls and cause justice to flow like a mighty stream — this God helped Middle Church rise from the ashes. This God showed their God-ness and brought us back to life! This God helped us open our doors for worship on Easter Sunday, after five years out of our building. Thanks be to God, we rose from the ashes, and our community came home to love.
Not even death can stop God from being God!
The Easter story is a remarkable one in the Christian faith; it declares God came to the world in the flesh and entered human history to teach us the power of the divine/human partnership. It articulates the very real ways powers and principalities fear love so much that they crucified Rabbi Jesus, who we call Christ, to thwart what love would do to transform the Roman Empire. This Easter story pits the Kin-dom of God against the Kingdom of Rome, in a contest of world views and ethics. And it looks like Rome wins, until God offers a Divine Do-Over and reanimates Jesus to life. God reverses the state-sanctioned murder of his beloved and causes a movement of love and justice to rise out of the grave.
We believe God took on the particularity of Jewish/Palestinian, Afro-Asiatic flesh; outsider-inside-empire flesh, to show us the power of humility to heal the world. Middle Church believes this still-speaking God partnered with us, helping us rise out of the ashes. We know God can do more than we can ask or imagine. We know God’s love is stronger than the hatred and bigotry of any empire. God’s truths are more powerful than the lies of any regime. We believe God will partner with humanity to save us all from bigotry and violence, to save us from ourselves. We trust that someday we will all be free.
Here is a link to our joyful Easter worship celebration from April 20. I hope you can feel the power of our multi-everything community of seekers, trying hard to do and be love on the planet.
We sang Andra Day’s beautiful “Rise Up” in our worship celebration:
And we’ll rise up High like the waves We’ll rise up In spite of the ache We’ll rise up And we’ll do it a thousand times again
And we sang Hozier’s “Nina Cried Power”
It’s not the song, it is the singing It’s the heaven of the human spirit ringing It is the bringing of the line It is the bearing of the lie It’s not the waking, it’s the rising
Finally, we sang Richard Smallwood’s “Total Praise.” We sang with power and joy the testimony that God is the source of our strength and the strength of our lives. We lifted our hands in total praise to this God of love, whose mercy and goodness are proof of life.
Wherever two or more are doing God’s work, wherever love is healing the world — that is proof of the resurrection. That is proof of life.
Amen!!
Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis is senior minister and public theologian at Middle Church in New York. Celebrated internationally for her dynamic preaching and commitment to justice, she champions racial equality, economic justice, and LGBTQIA+/gender rights. Featured on MSNBC, PBS, NBC, CBS, and NPR, she is the author of several books, including “Fierce Love” and the “Just Love Story Bible.” Countless individuals and communities have been inspired by Lewis’ transformative work on her podcast, “Love Period,” in columns and articles; and on stages, in churches, on the street, and in digital spaces around the globe.