[Revisited, irreverently reverent]
Oh God, this is the best Easter ever – no church!
I can’t bear the thought of going to church on Easter. Maundy Thursday, Good Friday…I’m all for it. I can happily be miserable. But Easter…can’t bear it.
Everyone miserable trying to muster a match for Easter expectations:
Smiling song leaders sweating bullets because they needed one more rehearsal and George, the only tenor who knows the music, is out with the flu, and Rodney, the visiting soloist, is rocking back and forth on the input to the bass amp. It’s popping like a pistol.
Clergy waving arms and wafting voices, straining with all their might to conjure the warm, joy-filled community-hug emotion slated for this day in the church calendar.
Parents, shooting for a color-coordinated, tidy, choreographed family photo before the Easter egg hunt, when the older kids scold the less older kids for not letting the little kids get the easy ones. (Why is everyone always miserably squinting in Easter photos?)
What could be more miserable than a day when a couple billion people are supposed to be happy and aren’t exactly sure why or how to comply?
The only thing they know for sure is that the reasons given are not sufficient.
They have known this since childhood.
Yes, what the clergy tell us makes theoretical sense, but the supporting data is hard to come by.
That is why the Easter bunny is trotted in, and cute little chicks, and fancy hats and handbags. If the reasons given aren’t sufficient, surely these extras will motivate enough positive response to get through the morning sufficiently buzzed.
Who said Easter is supposed to be happy, anyhow? How can it possibly be happy with frikin’ COVID-19 and North Korea and Syria and Mitch McConnell?
The first Easter wasn’t much better:
- the only God I could touch and be sure of just died and now I have hardly a clue what to do with this guy who appears out of nowhere
- this guy I don’t recognize, but then suddenly I do
- who lets me touch his hands and his side, but won’t let me hold onto him
- who eats fish but passes through closed doors
- who says he will be with me forever as he disappears forever in a cloud
- all the while telling me to spend my life convincing others to spend their lives convincing others to spend their lives convincing others…
This does not make for a happy day. This is a ‘Really? I mean, really?‘ day.
Easter slams the door on the notion any of us is getting out of this with our lives intact, either the way they are now or the way we’re fixin’ for them to be.
It means I can’t forget all about this nonsense and go back to fishing.
It means God is coming after us. Eternally. No escape.
Easter means I can’t ignore it when God asks, “Do you love me? Enough to follow me, sight unseen? To listen to the wind and act on what you hear? To wait when all say “Go” and go when all are waiting?”
Easter is God calling some 2 billion odd people to get out of the blasted boat and start walking to him on the water – for one and only one reason: “Do you love me, more than you love…whatever?”
Not a happy day at all. A swallow-hard, breathe-into-a-bag kind of day.
Oh God, Easter again. What am I going to do with You?
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