easter

lest anyone think that i believe easter is just about chocolate bunnies, i'll clarify here that i know full well that it's also about cadbury eggs and peeps. aside from the candy, i feel as if i'm trying to learn something about easter.

i don't think it's simply the baskets full of candy that i got as a kid that make easter difficult for me, but i'm not sure what it is. maybe it's that easter was simply another sunday we all went to church together, just like every other week. but easter never really struck me as anything big.

on christmas, we'd go to midnight mass as a family, so that made it different - thus special - from going to the 1130 mass every sunday. and i remain grateful for that, as it has taught me the importance of the incarnation as a pivotal theological concept.

i'd say it was around high school, that i understood the importance of good friday. though at that time i'd also read the new testament on my own, and knew it well enough to understand what scripture said about the resurrection, it somehow felt anticlimactic after good friday (which i know is a theological reversal since the crucifixion means nothing without the resurrection, and that a lot of people were crucified, but only Jesus came back to life).

my senior year of high school, while visiting colleges in Boston, i went to my first easter vigil service. it was at trinity church in copley square, one of my favorite places in my favorite city. and thinking back, i remember that the resurrection was never more beautiful to me than during that mass. we'd never seen the church's interior before, and as it was evening, the church was dark. then, partway through the mass, candles were lit, and the fire passed from one to another, so that everyone in the church eventually held a lit candle. as the light grew, the gilded ceilings reflected the glow; the figures in the stained glass windows glittered and seemed to come to life in the play between light and shadow; and the woodwork and craftsmanship of the building became visible.

during that easter vigil service, watching the light grow, played out a beautiful visual image of the light of the world coming into the darkness, and bringing life even in the midst of death.

over the last decade (okay, it's been more than a decade, but let me pretend it hasn't been that long), i have once again found that i have struggled with remembering the centrality of the resurrection.

Jak and i went to an easter vigil service this saturday. though, like trinity, also episcopalian(ish), it couldn't have been more different than my previous easter vigil service. though the style was different, i was thankfully reminded of the resurrection and it's importance.

the resurrection is the center for our hope in Jesus. the resurrection is the light that came into the darkness proving that darkness could not win. the resurrection is God laughing in the face of evil, sin, injustice, and giving us the freedom to find joy in a world that is still filled with those things. the resurrection lets us know that no matter how hard we are beaten, no matter how unfair our trials and struggles are, no matter how tough our journeys are, no matter how many fingers point at us or how loudly we are shouted down or how ridiculed we are, no matter how many betrayals we face, that none of that is the end of the story. the resurrection lets us know that after adversity, pain, and even death, we will rise again.

anyway, just my thoughts as this easter sunday came to a close.

** He is risen **