Photo by Anna Gru on Upsplash
Confession time here. As a regular church goer, I do a certain amount of uncharitable internal eye rolling when I see churches fill up at Christmas and Easter. It’s not that I don’t want to welcome people to church. I’m truly glad they come, but I’m also wondering why they come only for these high holy days.
I can sort of appreciate the draw of the Christmas candlelight service with the beautiful familiar carols and hymns as a part of Christmas celebrating with gifts and family gatherings. There’s the wonderful pageantry of the manger scene, the focus on the precious Baby and the choir of angels. What’s not to enjoy whether you’re a believer or not?
But while still a jubilant celebration, Easter remains a much more complicated story. How can anyone really grasp the amazing revelation of the Resurrection without having passed through Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross?
I see the contrast in the two holidays most clearly in our creations of Santa Claus and Easter Bunny. Santa embodies the Spirit of Christmas well. While he brings delightful gifts – a chance for everyone to feel like it’s his or her birthday right along with Jesus’, he also delivers an aura of magic akin to the theological idea of the divine breaking into our ordinary mortal existence. But Easter Bunny hiding eggs? What’s a bunny doing with eggs in the first place? I get eggs representing new life, but that’s a far cry from the promise borne out in Jesus’ appearances that God offers us resurrection of our souls and bodies in a continuation of our life after death.
The eternal hope of the Church at Easter is that some of the people who show up for services only then will somehow get their feet caught in the door on the way out. Maybe there will be something the pastor or priest says that gives them pause, or maybe the Holy Spirit will find some other way to be recognized within the body of the worship.
But that won’t be happening this Easter when churches won’t be open for services.
What will the Holy Spirit do instead this Easter?
It seems like it’s up to those of us who know and cherish the Jesus story to figure out some new ways to share it.
5 Responses to Easter Without Church