Easter Sunday at Home

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the clarifying effect of distress. Crisis has a way of highlighting the significance of important things while revealing the insignificance of other things. Everything just looks different when the stakes are so high.

Now that we are facing the prospect of no Easter services in churches, we find ourselves rethinking the whole package. This year we will have to forego so many of our favorite Easter traditions.

When I was growing up, Easter Sunday meant wearing a whole new outfit to church. No point in buying new clothes for this year’s Easter Sunday service. We will be “attending” the live-stream, maybe in our pajamas.

And that traditional Sunday brunch at the restaurant after church? Not this year.

Even the enduring image of Easter as the first big event of spring is overshadowed by the stark realities we’re all dealing with: the dislocation, the anxiety, the economic uncertainty.

Spring just doesn’t feel the same when the world is on hold and death seems to be stalking us.

But this crisis has given us a gift. It is only the trappings of Easter have been stripped away. What we will miss this year is the colorful gift wrap, not the gift itself.

We have been given the gift of an undistracted Easter. Our present crisis has not diminished Easter; rather, our anxieties, especially our anxieties about death, serve to highlight the power and beauty of what Christ accomplished for us in his death and resurrection.

The pandemic has forced all of us to contemplate our mortality. We don’t like to think about death, but our ever-evolving situation demands that we give death our attention right now. As of 9:36 this morning (Friday, April 10), nearly 100,000 people have died from Covid-19 worldwide, almost 17,000 of those deaths in the U.S. We all know someone with underlying health conditions that would make the contagion especially dangerous for them. And we worry that the plague will visit our own homes and take us or our loved ones.

Thus it is that as we approach Easter in plague time, we are caught in the tension between our fears and our hope. All around us we see the specter of Death, and yet we worship a risen Savior. We hear the rising number of deaths, even in our own community, and yet we know that in his resurrection, Jesus dealt Death the fatal blow.

I heard a story once about a missionary family who discovered a giant snake had gotten into their house. They quickly got everyone out and called for help. A friend came with his machete and strode into the house. He chopped the head off the snake and came back outside. For the next several minutes, they could hear the headless snake thrashing around in the house, smashing furniture and dishes and cabinets, reducing to splinters everything his massive body slammed against.

The family stood safe outside, listening to that dying animal destroy their belongings. They knew that the snake in his death-throes would destroy a great deal of their property, but they also knew that he couldn’t touch them. The snake was dying; they were safe.

That’s where we are now. In his death, Jesus has destroyed the power of death. Sure, death may wreak havoc on our bodies, but because of Jesus, we know that death is a thrashing, headless foe whom we need not fear. 

So, yes, we do grieve. We grieve about the loss of income for so many of our people. We grieve about the fearsome possibility of serious illness and even death that may come to our congregation, to our own homes. But as Paul reminded the believers in Thessalonica, “we do not grieve as others, who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13).

Our grief is real, but it is mixed with a sturdy hope that was born that Sunday morning when the earth trembled as the King of Glory crushed the head of his defeated enemy.

Where do we direct our attention in these fearsome days? Of course we need to be aware of dangers and take precautions. But people who follow the risen Christ know something that others cannot know: in Christ’s resurrection death itself has been wounded and is dying.

And that’s news we can celebrate without Easter egg hunts and new clothes and grand pageantry and Sunday brunch.

As the old hymn puts it so beautifully:
Death cannot keep his prey,
Jesus my Savior.
He tore the bars away,
Jesus my Lord.

Up from the grave he arose
With a mighty triumph o’er his foes.
He arose a victor from the dark domain,
And he lives forever with the saints to reign.
He arose!
He arose!
Hallelujah, Christ arose!   

Persevere,
Paul Pyle
Discipleship Pastor

Subscribe to receive Discipleship Weekly in your inbox each week.