Iona Collaborative

Easter Sunday | Psalm 118

"The same stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes."

This is the last post in our Lenten series — and we couldn't think of a better place to land than here.

All through this season, we have been walking alongside the priests, deacons, and lay leaders of small churches across the Episcopal Church. The ones leading quietly. The ones showing up week after week — to the Wednesday night gathering, the Sunday liturgy, the hospital visit, the second job that makes it all possible.

The builders of this world may overlook the small church.

But God does not.

God’s mercy endures forever. Not just for the largest congregation. Not just for the most resourced diocese. For all of it. For the twelve people singing on Easter morning just as surely as for the twelve hundred.

These small churches are our cornerstones — steadfast in faith, rooted in love, full of a joy that doesn't need an audience to be real.

On this day, the Lord has acted.

To every bivocational leader and every small congregation in our network — we see you. More importantly, so does God.

Alleluia. Christ is risen.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

From the cross, Jesus, fully human and fully divine, cries out.
Not with polished words, but with the raw despair of human pain.

And yet…
He cries out to God.

Even in anguish, there is a turning.
Even in silence, a relationship remains.

Psalm 22 begins in lament, but it does not end there. It bends toward something deeper: the quiet, sturdy truth that God hears.

“God did not hide…but heard when I cried.”

Our cries do not vanish into the dark.
They are held. Remembered. Heard.

And we are not alone in them.

Christ has gone before us.

A cloud of witnesses surrounds us.
Voices of sorrow and hope, past and present.
Joining their cries with ours.

On this Good Friday, we remember:
The God who hears Jesus hears us.

"I love the Lord, because he has heard the voice of my supplication."

On this Maundy Thursday, Jesus gives us a new commandment — love one another, just as I have loved you.

It is that simple. And that profound.

Today, in the middle of the preparations and the busyness and the exhaustion of Holy Week — pause. Even for five minutes.

You are loved.

Not because of how the service goes. Not because of how many people show up. Not because everything comes together perfectly.

Simply because God has inclined his ear to you. Because Jesus has called you his own. And because that love — the love that weaves our hearts together — is the whole point.

Go into these sacred days held by that.