'Grief doesn't have the final word.' Cape Cod pastors share their Easter messages

No matter how fast-moving today’s world seems to be, at the core, we still look to familiar, enduring events and seasons for meaning.

Spring has become a big time in our yearly calendar to break out the celebration for newness, rebirth and renewal.

Accordingly, the Cape Cod Times asked religious leaders from churches around Cape Cod to share their own hopeful scripts for the new season. Their underlying messages are similar: These days, we can’t do it alone, and reaching out to others can be empowering, leading to both spiritual and human connections.

Centuries before Christianity, the Easter season was often connected to the symbolism of new life. Today we mark off the spring equinox on our calendars, decorate Easter eggs, keep a hopeful eye on greenery spiking up at the local plant nursery and celebrate the holidays of Passover and Easter. It’s a time in the religious calendar to send out messages of hope, and this year such messages can’t come soon enough for most of us.

Work together for change

The Rev. Tony Cryer, pastor at the non-denominational Unity on Cape Cod, in Hyannis, had a positive, cheerful response.

“We believe everyone has a spark of divinity," Cryer said. "We can find the good in ourselves." Inspiring others to feel the same thing in themselves is important, too, he said.

His congregation, he said, “is called Unity for a reason – our interdependence and awareness of our oneness.”

The congregation is working to get away from a false sense of separation from God and from one another, and to actively engage in creating more positive change in the world, Cryer said. The focus is on intention and on helping to share this “wonderful life” with others, he said.

The goal of working together was echoed by the Rev. Dr. Kristin Harper at the Unitarian Church of Barnstable.

“We’re so divided, looking so much at people’s differences” rather than trying to help, Harper said.

“You can’t bend the universe toward justice on your own, (and) God is not going to do the job for us," Harper said, referring to a famous line often quoted by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., about the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice.

"Together we’re strong," she said. "We have the power, strength and love to get through anything.”

Speaking from Our Lady of Victory Parish in Centerville, the Rev. Gregory Mathias said that his message is part of the traditional greeting of Easter – that “Christ is risen. In the face of all sorrows, difficulties and sufferings,” he said, those words are “our ultimate hope.”

He shared the Portuguese translation of a line from a famous hymn: “Deus escreve direito por linhas tortas” – “God moves in mysterious ways.”

Look for the helpers

The Rev. John Elsensohn, the new pastor at First Congregational Church of Wellfleet, shared an anecdote from his Easter morning sermon, a story of when he served as a deckhand on a small cruise ship, and the ship went aground on a sandbar just as the ship was heading to open waters.

“We live in a world of unforeseen challenges. It’s easy to despair,” Elsensohn said.

Even when such circumstances arise, the resurrection is a sign of life and hope, he said, enabling individuals to “focus on ways that God’s power works through all of us.”

“There’s a lot of sadness in our midst” in these times, according to the Rev. Doug Scalise, pastor at Brewster Baptist Church.

In his message of hope, “Easter is really a story about bereaved friends” who then share in a joyous transformation on Easter morning.

“We all need to believe that grief doesn’t have the final word,” said Scalise.

He said that a former colleague once told him that he first thought that “hope was the icing on the cake,” but then came to feel that “hope is the cake.”

One of the best parts of watching the television show "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" as a child, he said, was being part of his neighborhood, with those neighbors close at hand should help be needed.

“Where do you look when you’re sad?” Rogers would ask. “Look for the helpers,” was his answer.

That's something “both true and helpful,” Scalise said. “Life is precious, resilient as well as fragile. Savor every day.”

Gain access to premium Cape Cod Times content by subscribing.

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Easter messages from Cape Cod churches full of hope and community