On March 31, twelve days before Easter Day 2009, the Akron Beacon Journal reported that twice in March racist graffiti was spray-painted on the walls of Lakeview Intermediate School in Stow, Ohio.

      On March 11 and 17, in the new light of morning students discovered large swastikas, the phrase "KKK", and a caricature of a Klansman in a white sheet spray-painted on the side of the school.

      My family and I live in Stow, Ohio.  Our son attended 5th and 6th grades at Lakeview Intermediate School.  He's in 8th grade now in the same school system and he has African-American friends at school.  The last time I saw them all together they were singing in the school choir Christmas concert.  All dressed up, standing on choir risers as they smiled for the crowd, they sang about the light of Christmas.

      In the new light of morning on March 31 just after the sun had risen, exactly how the sun rose on the first Easter morn, my son and I stood in our driveway waiting for his school bus. I was thinking about the act of racist hatred I had read about in the morning newspaper.  

       In my mind's eye I saw the young beautiful faces of his African-American friends.  As he bounced his basketball and took a shot at our driveway basketball hoop, we discussed the newspaper article.

     Suddenly his big yellow school bus was roaring up the street.  My heart stabbed with the need to say something in the face of racial hatred.  And I wanted to say it right then.  I only had a moment and I remembered all those New Testament healing stories I preach about so often: the ones where Jesus heals people in the blink of a moment.

     I said; "You know, whoever spray painted those things on the school are cowards.  That's why they did it at night.  And the best way to fight darkness is to shine Light."

        My favorite Easter story comes from John 20: 1-18.  The whole account takes place in the dark before the sun came up.  Peter, John and Mary Magdalene stumble around in and around the darkness of Jesus' tomb until finally Mary finds Christ: in the darkness.

      No doubt whoever spray-painted those evil things on the school wall in Stow probably didn't notice the Living Spirit of Christ lurking about in the darkness just waiting to be seen.

     That's a tragedy because if Easter is about anything at all it is about finding the new life of the Spirit of Christ in the darkness of ignorance, hatred, and even death.  Eventually the sun rose that first Easter morn as surely as the Son dawns on us today.

     Is there darkness anywhere today?  Then shine.



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