On Easter

So Becca asked me to post some thoughts on Easter (cf. The comments under the "Beaux Arts Ball" post) and I really don't feel like I have anything profound to write about. So I hope I don't disappoint anyone with the lack of profound insights but here are some of my thoughts ranging from Easter and the events surrounding Easter.

As weird as it may seem, I'm actually sort of sad that lent is over. I know, it's weird, a time of mourning and fasting a time where the church has traditionally (mainly the Catholics and not the Orthodox or Protestants) prohibited the use of "Hallelujah" - you wouldn't think I'd be sad about this time ending. Especially with the fact that Lent ends on my favorite Church holy-days of all time - Easter Sunday. Don't get me wrong, I love the joyful time of living in Eastertide (the season after Easter and before Pentecost) I love Easter, and I don't particularly enjoy fasting, but I still am sort of sad that Great and Holy Lent is over. There is something very special about traveling through life in those 40 days of intense concentration and humility. There is something unique about living out 40 days in a mystical desert. Maybe it's that I learned a lot during this Lent, maybe it's that I like the somber feel of it, I'm not really sure, but I do know that I am torn between the joy of Eastertide and the ache of Lent. I think that's why both of these are so essential to our church calendar (something a majority of Protestantism has completely neglected).

Easter was great though. Although I spent a lot of the weekend on the road, driving back home and then back to KY, it was good to get home and visit family and friends. It was interesting being back in a protestant church, but I don't think I could have picked a better situation. I love my home pastor and I don't know if I've ever met a better pastor than he. I only wish that he would have came to Port while I was still a full-time attender there. It was definitely different, but good to be back. I also find it hard to sit in a pew on a Sunday like Easter Sunday. There is so much joy and so much energy just flowing through me it was all I could do just to remain silent and sit in the pew. I so badly wanted to just get up and start preaching. This isn't to say that Pastor Beckley did a bad job, on the contrary, he did an excellent job as always, but there is so much I want to convey that it still pains my heart to be silent in church - especially in a protestant church. I think it pains me more in a protestant church because I know that I can serve there. In the Orthodox Church I attend I know from the outset that I have no authority and it would be wrong for me to speak as one with authority to these people so it doesn't really burn within me as much there, but when I go to a protestant church I just want to shout it out.

I don't want to critique Pastor Beckley because as I said his sermon was heartfelt and truly a word from the Lord, but I feel like the things that were running through my heart and mind were not conveyed how I would convey them. This is probably just a difference in personalities, but either way it gives me a small opportunity to pontificate here.

What my heart wanted to scream was along these lines although these are admittedly very raw ideas that would need some polishing. And this "list" is by no means meant to symbolize any of my thoughts of Pastor Beckley's sermon.

Although the Church does a good job at celebrating Easter I feel we do a poor job of internalizing Easter. I wanted to scream and shout at the top of my lungs, I wanted to convey the truth that Easter is not just the rising of Christ. Easter is the beginning of the end of time. The pinnacle of human history happened that Easter Sunday 2,000 years ago. Jesus Christ conquered death and with that he initiated the final age of the world. His resurrection does not just mark the start of a movement, but truly was (as the gospel writers indicate) the highest point of all human history. This is it! This is all we could ever hope for and imagine. God enfleshed conquering death, conquering sin! I wish I could convey the excitement that fills my heart as I meditate on this and write these words. I am just baffled every year at how the Church can just go about her Easter 'celebration' in such a nonchalant way. This is the essence of everything we are and hope to be. We live in this reality. We worship because of this event. We can have hope in life and amidst death because of this glorious act. I can't even describe the joy and excitement in my heart. That's why I want to scream and shout. I want to help people to realize what this means for them, for the church, for humanity. This isn't just something that happened and is over. This is a living reality! Christ did not rise (completed past tense) but "he is risen" (past action that continues through to the present). So many Christian's treat Easter with no excitement, no joy and no holy fear and trembling. It's like we pass the same judgment on the celebration of Easter that Pope Benedict (I think it was Benedict or maybe John Paul) said of Mel Gibson's Passion - "it is was it is." How can we live in such apathy toward the highest holy day of the year? "It just baffles me" (and yes that was a Madden reference). My heart is warmed every time I think on these things. I don't understand it and it brings me to the verge of tears - both of sadness and frustration. Sadness because of the state of the church and frustration because I don't know how, as a future minister, to convey this joy to people. How can we do it? How can we help people to realize that this is it! This is our life-long curriculum. We are called to live and to learn in the shadow of the cross and the empty tomb everyday of our Christian lives.

This life-long learning about how to live in the reality of Easter is why it is so vitally important for us to remember that every Sunday, every Sunday of the year is like a mini-Easter. This is why the ancient Christians decided that we should meet on Sunday rather than the Sabbath (Saturday). They knew that Easter was the center of life and thus every week we meet and celebrate the resurrection as a community of faith. We learn the curriculum of the resurrection every Sunday, or at least that's what Church is supposed to be. [This could be a launching point for some of my anti-church growth/seeker church sentiments but we'll save that for another day, but feel free to insert them yourselves.] We are people of the resurrection, that is our identity, and that is how we ought to define ourselves. Is it any wonder that the early believers greeted one another with the statement "he is risen" and the response "he is risen indeed." This didn't start as a Easter Sunday ritual, it started as an everyday ritual to identify believers. We are identified by the resurrection! This is who we are and thus it should effect every ounce of our being - especially the way we remember the resurrection.

So I guess I had more thoughts on Easter than I realized, they're more just out of the normal "Easter meditations" box.

~ Ben