Stained Glass and Empty Tombs

A Reaffirmation of Easter Observance

I love my wife. Like, a lot. A whole lot. At times, obsessively so. My breath still catches when she walks in a room. I’m off kilter when she travels for work. The worst day with her is better than the best day without her. If you know, you know.

And yet, despite sharing this life and love with her each and every day, we still celebrate our anniversary. In fact, we commemorate it all the more so, as it represents when what we now enjoy daily became a reality, the day that made all subsequent days possible.

I see Easter the same way. Yes, the crucifixion is a ‘past tense event’ (in so far as our human perceptions can conceive time) and the redemptive totality expressed in the phrase, ‘It is FINISHED,’ is indeed fully accomplished. But sometimes I need reminded of that. Sometimes life happens, burdens arise, and cognitive dissonance is permitted center stage. Observance of Easter—and all elements of the church calendar for that matter—is equal parts commemoration and realigning, an opportunity to repent (‘metanoia,’ change my mind and go a new, healthier direction), to course correct, to remind myself of the enduring nature of that of which I am a part.

Admittedly, for some folks these ‘holy days’ have trauma attached to them; bad memories of abusive religious or familial systems. I understand that and respect each person’s journey. But for me, the more intimately I connect to the beautiful parts of my past, the more grateful I am for where I am today. At the risk of sounding like Al Franken’s SNL character, Stuart Smalley, I like myself and the life I enjoy! Each part of my journey made me who I am and to deny or downplay that is to miss the forest for the trees. It also dishonors the memory of those who God put in my path to sow seeds of love and value into my life at each phase of my walk.

In celebrating Resurrection Day, I’m drawn back in my mind….

I’m 10 years old, sitting in the next to last pew at Grove Memorial UMC in Lewistown, PA, my grandmother’s church where we spent 90% of my childhood Easter Sundays. When I close my eyes, I can feel the sun that cast on me through the stained glass window behind the altar. I can feel the bear hug that her longtime pastor gave me whenever he saw me, a giant smile on his face that told me I was welcome and included in that space. It’s over 20 years now since I’ve been in that sanctuary and yet I can remember the smell, the feel of the pews, and the image on that same stained glass window. I was loved (and felt that love) in that room. The memory of it is precious to me.

I’m 20 years old, now worshipping with charismatics in an observance of my risen Savior that is different from what I knew before. No more or less beautiful, it revealed another dimension to His nature as a presently speaking, revealing, engaging God. There too the love is felt.

I’m 30 years old, and part of a faith community that emphasizes the truly finished nature of the Finished Work of the cross. Although still dividing those who are in from those who are out, it too loved me and gave me the best it had.

I’m 40 years old, becoming disillusioned with the contradictions and merit-based foundation I see in my faith, frustrated by what had become for me endless striving to get, striving to ‘be’, always something else to do before God would act on my behalf. I now encounter the love of a broader community of ideas that for the first time in my life gave me language for what the Spirit had always been saying to me but for which I lacked the liberty to believe. And through this, perhaps for the first time in my life, I found my voice. Not the voice I parroted of others. But MY voice. Or more accurately, His voice within me.

My journey formed me; the good, the bad, and the ugly. The hurt was turned to glory and the love fueled the spark of hope that keeps us all going in dark times.

And it is Easter, Resurrection Day, that makes all of that possible. So, mixing my holidays, I can find no better words with which to conclude this musing than to paraphrase those of Scrooge’s nephew Fred in Dickens’, A Christmas Carol…

And therefore, my friends, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that observance of Easter has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!