Easter Day, the central moment of our faith, is fast approaching. Think about this for a minute. Is this a very important moment in your year? I would certainly hope so. In fact I will assert that Easter is so much more than a major decoration in the calendar that we are all likely to take it for granted to a certain degree. I know that I often do, especially when I am busy with the practical details of liturgy, sermon writing, taking out the sacrament and so on.
I will try to explain what I mean. For some folk, religion is a take it or leave it business. That’s the way of it although we pray that they will encounter the divine reality somewhere along their journey. For others religion is a heritage and a habit and Easter, like Christmas, is an important, even moving, part of their yearly round, along with July 4th, and Thanksgiving. That is an enriching thing so we won’t begrudge them their encounter with God in those moments. Maybe that will be their portal for a more sustained relationship with the Holy One? And then there are those of us who try to make our faith a full-time part of how we live our lives and schedule our year. For us, Easter is a moment towards which we have been moving in the annual rhythm of our spiritual life. It is not a ‘take it or leave it’ option and it is not a casual or habitual encounter. But we can still miss something, because Easter is far more than a day in the holiest calendar.
Easter speaks of the nature of the universe and our place in it. If you think about it this way the picture is painted on a very large canvas indeed: far too big to fit in our living room as some sort of icon. In fact, the only way we can truly live with such a picture is to realize that we are a part of the scene ourselves. This isn’t something we can tuck away in the compartment of our lives called “spiritual” or hang on the walls of our self-identity, as “Christian” or “Episcopalian”. Easter is too big to fit inside our calendars or even inside our lives. To encounter Easter properly means to step off the stage of our daily life and enter into another realm or dimension of reality.
Our lives are usually too busy to remember that we really are playing a part in a cosmic drama where life, goodness and hope are contending with death, evil and despair. Easter, rising from the shadows of Holy Week as the focus of the Christian world view, is a good time to remind ourselves that we are players on that stage, the drama is for keeps and the Cross is for real. But so is the victory and the good news it reveals.
To paraphrase St. John Chrysostom, whose Easter Homily I read at every vigil service I conduct, when death swallowed Christ, it wasn’t Christ that was defeated; it was death itself that was destroyed. This tells that universe is a good place, founded on love, and no matter how great the evil or how dark the shadows that may blight a life or a generation or an age of humankind, God’s love is the power that can never be overcome in the final counting.
This is, on the one hand, a serious, word-class, heavyweight proposition; so don’t just give it a nod as you pass it by. On the other hand, it is such a profoundly wonderful piece of good news that it should set our hearts and souls ablaze with glorious light.
“Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen Indeed!”
Christopher +