Depending on when you pick up the paper or turn on your preferred digital device, it will be, is, or was Easter Sunday. (There’s a sentence that wouldn’t have made sense twenty years ago.) Regardless, happy Easter!
For those of us who wear the label “Christian,” Easter is at the center of that. The empty tomb, the risen Christ, is more than the “reason for the season.” It is the absolute essential core of our faith. It can’t be overstated: everything spins from the first Easter.
All those individual believers historically have come together with others in churches, because “where two or more of you are gathered, I will be there.” It is sadly a fact that those churches have splintered into many denominations despite sharing a single story. It is probably the best evidence there is of mankind’s inability to get along. Divided though we are, the fundamental creed is the same. It’s not God’s fault we meet in separate buildings.
Beyond all those Christians gathered in churches, the effects of the first Easter have rippled through history and around the globe. Christianity has had a large impact on the “West.” There is a line that runs from the ancient Greeks, through the Old Testament, and through the Easter event that transpired in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. Of that, grows the Judeo-Christian worldview that the West is rooted in, right up to the 21st century, here and now.
The West is approximately the western hemisphere. As a way of thinking and seeing reality, it centered in Europe and then expanded out to the places Europeans spread their influence. That has not happened without some pain and trauma, often to the native people in those places. Christianity wasn’t always spread by word and love. Sometimes it was violence and control. Again, that’s not God’s fault.
All this is to say that a lot hangs on that first Easter. If you are a Christian like me, the significance is obvious. But even if you’re not a Christian, it’s place in history is undeniable.
That’s the big picture. We don’t live in the big picture. We live in small moments. A bunch of small moments strung together make a life. I will spend part of Easter in a church, specifically Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s. Some of the day will be spent with family. There will be a meal in the middle, a modern-day “feast.” There will be small children, so baskets and an eminent bunny will have a part.
Easter is at the end of Holy Week. Holy Week commemorates a story we’ve known since young. It begins on Palm Sunday with Jesus’ glorious arrival in Jerusalem. There is great excitement and elation. All human emotion is fleeting, and this is no exception. From that high, Holy Week wends its way to the Last Supper, the night in the garden, and ultimately the cross of Good Friday, as far from the joy of Palm Sunday as one can get. But the greatest joy returns Easter morn.
I try to attend the services of Holy Week. I know the story; I know how it ends. But I want to live it again. In those eight days, is every emotion we know as humans. It is exhilarating and breathtaking in its heights. It is crushing and devastating in its valleys. It is called the Passion. A definition I found of passion is “any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling, as love or hate.” Love to hate, and everything in between. That’s Holy Week.
We walk with Jesus, recreating in our minds events that are both historic and spiritual. We’re there with palms. We’re there in the upstairs room with the apostles, and later in the garden of Gethsemane. We’re at the foot of the cross as darkness fills the sky. And finally, we’re at the empty tomb and on the road to Emmaus as word spreads about the Resurrection.
We are Judas. We are Pontius Pilate. We are Peter. We are Mary Magdalene. By that, I mean we steep ourselves in the emotions they held and fought with. Again, every feeling our species can feel is in that week.
In that swirl of human beings at their worst and their best, Jesus is. He is fully human, experiencing a death of incomprehensible pain. Then comes the mystery. He is fully divine and conquers human death. In that is our salvation.
I don’t pretend to understand that completely. Here is faith in God and trust in the Bible. It’s also trust in those who’ve gone before us. It is faith of our fathers and faith of our mothers. Like everything we know, it is passed to us.
If we’re paying attention and embrace Easter fully, we should be moved. It’s probably too much to say every Easter Sunday we should be changed people. But if we profess to be Christian, we should be a little better person after that. Can we be a little more patient with those in our house? Can we be a little more tolerant of those in our community? Can we be a little more understanding of the “other side” of issues and even politics? Can we be a little more loving?
The United States is made up of approximately two thirds Christians. In this nation of religious freedom, we respectfully embrace our Jewish, Muslim, agnostic, and all other fellow citizens. But two thirds is a lot. That seems enough that if the Easter story is laid in our hearts, America should be a better, kinder place the day after.
Alas, that didn’t happen last year and likely won’t this. I know I’ll slip back into some of my more undesirable habits and qualities soon after. We are imperfect beings created by a perfect God. It’s another of those mysteries. But I can try to hold Easter in my heart after Sunday.