Easter Sunday, Year C
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
April 20, 2025
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
To watch the full service, please visit this page.
There’s an unusual Orthodox icon that tends to pop up around this time of year. Instead of focusing on a single individual, like most do, it displays a dynamic scene in which a shining figure drags a man and a woman from their graves while the lids of their coffins lie beneath his feet in the shape of a rough cross. This image, known as “the Harrowing of Hell,” speaks to a truth that underlies the mysteries that we’ve joined to celebrate today. But to comprehend this image—or even the significance of Easter itself—we need to look past our modern theologies and ideas of how the world works, beyond even that of the Reformation and Medieval eras. We need to remind ourselves of a long-forgotten universe, one that ruled human imagination for nearly all of history.
So…
Once upon a time, so far back that whatever you’re thinking isn’t remotely long enough—and neither is what you’re thinking now—Everything-that-is was subsumed within two realms. The Celestial, home to the Divine, was a place of light, order, harmony, and joy. There, everything functioned in peace and unity within the kind and generous will of the Most High God. Opposite this realm stood the Underworld, a place of darkness, chaos, confusion, and fear. At the border between the two sat…Nothing—just a blankness that divided Reality from itself and prevented the two regions from ever interacting. Chaos sat longing to consume the heavens while the Divine remained helpless, unable to aid those trapped in Disorder. At some point—many say as the result of a great war, though others report that the Most High simply spoke, God’s Word flooding the Void—the Celestial established a third realm, both a buffer and a bridge between these antithetical aspects of existence.
Chaos, however, quickly proved intent on expanding its domain, devouring this new layer of Reality, so the Divine placed humans into the freshly formed Earthly Realm to stabilize it and implement Order. Unfortunately, humans, though agents of Life, were constructed from remnants of material Death left as it had fled. That made us unreliable representatives, sometimes turning toward light, love, and peace but often falling to the lures of darkness, fear, and oppression. For age upon age these three realms remained in an uneasy balance, the Celestial continuing to empower and provide for the humans while the Underworld patiently claimed each and every one, hoarding us away within its silent domain.
Then, one day, something new happened.
The Most High, infinite in power, wisdom, and strength, chose to become human. Born into the Earthly Realm a fully native being, they wandered our world, teaching the ways of the Celestial Realm while healing and serving and demonstrating what humans could become if they were to fully turn toward the Heavens. Sadly, fear and jealousy remained strong within humanity, eventually leading us to band together and kill this one that challenged our practices and traditions.
But one way or another, that divine death turned out to be part of the plan.
Now native not only to the Earth but even within the Underworld, a place previously cut off from any heavenly being, Celestial light from the Most High exploded throughout the darkness, revealing and establishing Order within this realm of Chaos while liberating those whom the Underworld had bound to itself. Life incarnate shining out from within Death, the Most High leveled the barriers that had so long sequestered this Hidden Realm from the rest of Reality. Marching straight out the Gates of Hell, they lead those formerly captive in joyful and triumphant array.
That is the Harrowing—the plundering—of Hell which our Easter icon celebrates. In Jesus, the Most High, shining with the light of Heaven, drags Adam and Eve from Darkness, and in so doing raises their descendants—all of us—to the life of the Divine.
These are the realities that Easter proclaimed to ancient ears—and those newly awakened today. Jesus’ death and resurrection aren’t simply the payment of a debt or the offering of one final, sufficient sacrifice but God’s active remaking of the Universe![1] The Realms, so long divided, have become one New Creation, united under the authority, majesty, and mercy of the Most High. Humans need no longer tremble before the whimsy we imagine of the Divine, nor should we dread our journey into Death. Light has shined in the Darkness, and the Darkness cannot overwhelm it. Life rules, even in Death! Order and joy have flooded the shadows we so long feared. Division is no more, and under Divine anointing, all are free to walk in peace, to love and, in so doing, to serve the Lord!
[1] The story isn’t quite over—the Ascension plays a role as well.