Easter is When We All Get to "Come Forth" & "Appear"

​We celebrate the Risen Christ this Easter! Please join us as we not only hear the familiar story of Jesus’ resurrection, but also hear a lesser known passage written in Isaiah to the devastated exiles who had lost their land, their king, and their Temple. The disciples and followers of Jesus felt heartbreak and despair on that Sunday morning, like the Hebrew people in bondage in Babylon. As Jesus shows himself to be alive once more, the passage in the 49th chapter of Isaiah speaks of a God who has answered them, who has helped them, who has kept them, and has given them as a covenant. God calls on them to courageously say: “to the prisoners, ‘Come out,’ and to those in darkness, ‘Appear.’”

As we celebrate Jesus’ coming out of the tomb and appeared before the whole world demonstrating a power and love that the world  had not yet imagined, Isaiah’s usage of two little Hebrew verbs also suggest the cosmic purposes of God for his people. The two mandates are first to “come forth” and free the prisoners- free people from their fear, anxiety, despair, hunger, poverty, shame and guilt. Second, we are to announce to the invisible, those in the shadows, at the margins of our society, “Appear!”  The power of the resurrection and the life of Jesus is to authorize all persons, all exiles, all marginalized to be fully present and visible, to be fully reconciled to life in community.

So, as we celebrate the reality of Jesus’ coming forth out of the tomb and appearing to the world, we also understand our new role to utter and enact these two little verbs: come forth and appear, so that we might become the covenant that God is seeking in the dawning Kingdom of Heaven!