Paschal Reflections

I should begin with, Happy Easter! before I launch into thinking about how we celebrate Easter, thinking back on last week and some conversations with friends. So a Happy Easter to everyone who celebrates it, and a Happy Passover to everyone who celebrates it. And welcome back colored petals of all varieties, please don't be intimidated by today's snow.

Our family Holy Week observances have varied from being at multiple services all three days (and even most Wednesday evenings in Lent) to missing everything but Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, which was Ryan's season during residency one year. A dear friend held off Easter dinner until he could be home so at least he could taste the celebration. I think our most committed year was the year the boys were in utero. The washing of the feet was especially heart-felt for me that year as it had been some time since I had been able to touch my own feet.

Of course since having the boys, evening services have been a challenge. Our first year in Chicago we wanted to alternate evenings so that at least Ryan or I could be at each night of Holy Week. But just as the service was getting underway, I paged Ryan frantically. "Dietrich can't nurse. He's wheezing! It sounds like this: 'heeet', 'heeet'. His heart is racing." I spent the rest of the night in a brightly lit ER room with a child who promptly stopped wheezing when he went outside, who contracted a stomach flu via playing on the floor, and who finally screaming to sleep during an unnecessary nebulizer treatment. On Maundy Thursday, we learned how to treat croup, but no one had their feet washed or gathered at the Eucharist.

This year, the same kid who kept us from Holy Week a few years ago made it to services all three (four, counting Easter Sunday) days. Elliott, Dietrich, my mom and I went to the noonday Maundy Thursday service where we were invited to gather at the alter, pray forgiveness, and be blessed by the pastor. Friday night Dietrich and I Sat in darkness and listened to the passion story sung in parts. Saturday we planned to all attend the Easter Vigil, if only we could all nap. The napping hour turned to roucus playtime, but when given one final chance, Dietrich fell asleep, determined to go back to church, and see the darkness become light. He and Ryan ventured off as I helped Elliott (and me) into jammies and brushed teeth.

When they came home, Dietrich was literally bouncing off the bed with excitement -- the fire! the candles! the organ and instruments! He witnessed the baptisms of twin babies and an adult. He tasted the first meal shared after the days of silence. He also heard a college kid in a car driving by, "I'm glad their dead!" thinking the gathering was a funeral procession. But amidst the excitement and confusion of the culmination of Holy Week, the liturgy stands for itself in saying what we cannot explain. And why would we want to?

The Easter Vigil is something still new to me. My first vigil was at St. Phillips Episcopal parish in Durham, NC. The darkness and fire and lighting the candles and all the readings awoken my senses, but I wasn't ready for the lights, the organ, the trumpets and the Easter lilies to suddenly appear out of nowhere. It was shocking to say, "The Lord is Risen!" when I had never said them before the sunrise. I came home and felt the Easter joy coming over me, and yet guilty for not waiting for the sun, the dawn, to be the light. I mentioned going to several services one year -- this was the year. I went to an Easter dawn service on the front lawn of a Moravian church. I do not recommend going to both Easter vigil and Easter dawn. But even if I was more awake, it, too, somehow wasn't right. I was missing the tombstones.

In all the years I'd celebrated Easter, with the exception of when I lived in Thailand (when Easter coincided with the Thai New Year celebration and meant I was doused with water on my way to church) I heard the Easter proclamation in a cemetary among the tombstones. We had a small band, we waited for the sun to peak over the crest of the hill, and the pastor began, "The Lord is Risen!" A liturgy of hymns and gospel readings followed, and a hearty breakfast after that. There were years that hail pebbles pinked off the xylophone bells I was playing. There were other years that we stood in fresh snow or the spring thaw. Most years we shivered. But it was always amongst the dead, waiting for the sun to rise or at least the sky to lighten.

It seems that both these practices, Easter vigil and Easter dawn are needed to keep the church from being too right in what it does. And maybe there is something to be said about keeping the Good Friday silence all the way until the first Sunday of Easter and sound out the trumpets then. The Easter vigil places the light of Christ in the hands of the people. It is up to them to bring light into the church, and into the world. It is Christ who offers all light after having seen all darkness, but it is Christ's followers who are charged to be light in the world that all too often chooses, or simply finds itself, in darkness. But to wait until the dawn, until the light has reached the world, reminds the church that the light has come to the world, it is not ours to create. And to say the proclamation among those who have died brings all the irony into focus.

So with that, we are well into Easter week. Elliott hums the Easter hymn, and Dietrich gets most of the words (though he was first belting out, Jesus Christ is Born Today, Ahhhhhhleluia!"). We grateful to be here, however we ushered in the light.