Easter

First, I wanted to point anyone who hasn't seen it yet to my wife's blog and to the narrative of her most recent Easter. She speaks far more gracefully than I can. Celebrating Life (together).

And though she got to hers before mine (and if you read them both a lot of the details may be the same), I also wanted to share my Easter experience.

For, truthfully, the first time in my life I spent a major holiday away from my family (with the exception of watching the New Year's ball drop). My experience of all holidays has, generally, always been in the context of Danville Virginia with my parents, brother, sister, grandparents, aunt, uncle, and cousins.

In our family Easter has always been like a mini Christmas. Just like on Christmas morning, Easter morning would consist of us waking up at our grandparents house and going downstairs to see what the Easter Bunny had brought us! We always had our traditional Easter basket packed with our favorite sweets, gift cards, gum, and other nicknacks. Then there would be something a little more substantial. Easter presents I remember are my catcher's gear that I wore through high school, video games, I remember getting a new fishing pole one year, things of that nature.

We would then get dressed and go to my grandparents church. My grandparents have been going to their church for a long time and are well established there. It's not the largest congregation but by no means small. My guess is, like many churches, it fills up a little bit more on those "big deal" Sundays with out of town family and then of course "those people." You know the ones...the people who never come to church except on days like Christmas and Easter. The ones where you wonder what kind of commitment they really have to their faith; I mean, are they really even Christians? Those are the thoughts that would generally go through my head when I would see people show up once every 4 months...no one likes a fair weather fan!

So this year, Easter was very different for me. I didn't wake up at my grandparents' house in Virginia. I wasn't with all of my extended family. There was no Easter basket or gifts sitting out when I came out of the bedroom. It was in fact, a "normal" Sunday, nothing was any different...except that Kelsey and I decided to try out a new church. That's right. For the first time in my life, I was "one of those."

For the last two-ish months, Kelsey and I have slowly gotten up on Sunday morning (not late, just taken our time). It's usually the morning where we cook a big breakfast: pancakes, bacon, eggs, hot maple syrup. Not a bad thing in my opinion. We spend those mornings sitting at our table with the curtains to our big windows pulled back, eating, talking, and admiring the city we live in. They are quite beautiful times really...and like Kelsey said, if Jesus was here I think he would quite enjoy having breakfast with us on a Sunday morning. But none the less, we have not been attending church.

At one point Kelsey and I had been attending a church in our neighborhood. It was a good place, a small community, and almost every couple there had at least one child between the ages of 4 and 12. We felt comfortable there...I imagine the emphasis they placed on kids played a large role in my comfort. But after a few months, it never really became more. It was good, with good people, but we just didn't connect. For being a "neighborhood church," there was really no one who actually lived in the neighborhood and no one who could really connect with us as a young married couple. So we stopped going and did not start looking again.

There was no real motivation to look and as a speaker we heard this past weekend elegantly stated, the church had become irrelevant to this generation, the church (as a gathering institution) had become irrelevant to me. (more to come about this in a later post)

So for the first time, in awhile, we ate breakfast a little quicker than usual. I put on long khaki slacks and tucked in a shirt. And we walked through the rain to go to a new church on Easter morning. The church we decided to go to was St. Paul's Episcopal. Here again, is another big shift. I grew up going to a "traditional" Methodist service and when we spent holidays in Virginia the services were even more "traditional." But none of these traditional services come close to the liturgical emphasis of the Episcopal church.

And oddly enough, there was something new, something very refreshing about it. The rhythm of the service was completely new. You stand and sit. And then stand and then sit again, over and over. The cantor singing the entire liturgy only with the exception of the sermon. The swinging incense. The changing of robes. Everything happened in such a specific, intentional way. And for most who know me, you know I have a had a pretty big beef with rituals.

But as I have matured I think I can now appreciate the intentionality of the rituals. Kelsey described it best when we left. It was the first time that we experienced worship through ALL of our senses. The movement, the smells, the tastes of bread and sweet wine, the feeling of water on you, and the sound of constant music. While the entire liturgy lasted an hour and a half I found myself awake and present through it all.

The sermon was beautiful. While embracing the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the narrative that goes along with it, her sermon reminded us that pain and death are very real in our world. It reminded me that the essence of the resurrection is, that even in the midst of death, there is hope for new life. For things to be restored. Her sermon included a painful story of a community that while in the midst of disaster, honored and celebrated the hope they have in their children's lives.

KESENNUMA, Japan — Schools here begin class in April and hold graduation ceremonies in March; like spring, they represent renewal and rebirth.

On Tuesday (March 22nd) morning, in a school meeting hall in this tsunami-ravaged seaport, it became something else: an act of defiance.

Gathering in the shadow of this seaport’s tsunami disaster zone, two solemn and often tearful crowds met to award diplomas to the sixth- and ninth-grade classes of Hashikami Elementary and Junior High schools. Inside the junior high auditorium, hundreds of refugees from the March 11 tsunami rolled up their blankets and moved to the rear to make way for a ritual that any parent would instantly recognize: the strains of Pachelbel’s Canon; the students’ march to the podium; the singing of school songs; the snapping of cellphone photos.

Full Story: Diplomas and Uncertainty for Japanese Pupils

The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ was itself an act of defiance. But what I was reminded of this Easter was that we don't have to wait for redemption to happen. Jesus died and He HAS risen. Resurrection out of death is constantly happening all around us. Life and the hope for things to be made right exists even in the death and pain of this world. This Easter, on an Easter that was very different than Easters I have celebrated before, I heard the story of Jesus Christ's death and why it matters right now, in this life, in this world, in this place.