It's Thursday after Easter Sunday, Philip and I are practicing empty nesters with Lydia exploring colleges with a buddy and Henry in Montana studying dutifully (please, Lord Jesus, hear our prayer). This was the first Easter the four of us haven't been together for Easter - a trend which is less and less jarring each time it happens. Years with lots of firsts are always complicated - they defy my conviction that I like change and remind me that I, too, am a creature of habit. What stopped me in my tracks this year was the conversation with Henry after Easter lunch with friends - I've always associated Easter with flowers (and pollen) and greening grass (and pollen) and bright, colourful outfits (and pollen). When we spoke with Henry on Easter Sunday, however, he was with friends on the side of Little Sacajawea Mountain hiking...in the snow!?! Easter Sunday and snow don't match in my mind - they don't even cozy up as friends. But here are the pictures to prove it (thanks to Henry's text):
There are no crocus peeking through, no azaleas in bloom - how do you pluck flowers to take to church to flower the cross when the earth is still sleeping under a blanket of snow? Even when we lived in Canada there were signs of Spring and rebirth when Easter arrived. This was mind blowing.
After I sat with this incongruent reality for a while, I was grateful for the way it expanded my thoughts. There's a reason why Easter is a season in the church, why we spend weeks leading up to Easter practicing penitence and reflection. We prepare annually for the nonsensical love that Easter celebrates - a love that means our days on earth are not the end of our stories for those who claim Christian as part of our identity. Each year we hear from the pulpit some version of "live as Easter people - full of hope, in response to the love and grace that God Incarnate gifted us - a love and grace we will not fully understand until we find ourselves face to face with our Maker in the afterlife".
I get why people may think Christianity doesn't make sense! The world doesn't make sense, that's for sure - radical love and grace and hospitality have no room in our day to day unless we choose them. I wonder if we Christians (me included) get ourselves all wound around the axle of human depravity 364 days a year and allow the hope of Easter to break through only one day a year when we dress up and order Easter lilies and hide eggs? I think we sometimes live as people blanketed by snow because really internalizing what Easter means and living as Easter people is just far too overwhelming to embrace? I'm finishing seminary and this sort of hope and glory is STILL hard to fathom - I've been studying this Jesus my whole life and very intensely for the last four years and He's still clouded in mystery!
I guess the endgame for me is this - being Easter people doesn't always feel like freshly springing flowers, sundresses when it's just a tad too cold, bonnets, eggs and chocolate. Being Easter people means we have to live fully as we are in the moment - faithful to our reality and honest about who we are and where we are despite what the Sunday calendar tells us to do. I'd be lying if I said life as a lifelong Christian has always been easy and flowery. I'd be lying if I said I'd never been angry with God or with the Church or with people I love. And that's OK. God is big enough and loving enough to let us feel all the feels and still hold us in the palm of God's hand. So if this past Sunday felt like a snowy mountainside instead of a flower popping party, that's OK too.
We are Easter people - that means God's love for us in unbreakable and un-quantifiable - even when we can't feel it. Just know that when you and I get glimpses of the joy, shock and redemption of Easter morning that it's a gift. And maybe, just maybe, we can be part of someone else's glimpse of the Divine when we try to love extravagantly, practice radical hospitality and lean into gratitude for the ways we experience new life over and over and over.
