“Essential” Easter

Nothing about this weekend feels quite right. Instead of hunting plastic eggs on a friend’s farm, we are searching for real eggs on a grocery delivery app. We picked tonight’s Easter dinner up from people wearing masks and gloves. And we are distanced from family and friends to protect their health and ours.

The first few weeks of this quarantine life were tolerable, interesting even. But as days come and go, seasons change, activities are missed, and events are cancelled, our energy for this new normal is beginning to wane. My kids are melting down more often. We all watch the news and hear the stories. And our hearts are growing heavy with impatience, anxiety, and despair.

How long, O Lord? How long?

It would feel good and right to be free to go to brunch and church this weekend. Free to be with family and friends. Free to shake hands and hug and reconvene our normal lives. We want to sing “Up from the grave he arose” while also being out from the bondage of this plague. But it isn’t so. All is not yet right with the world.

I remember feeling like Easter 2006 was a let down. My dad had died five months earlier, and we were still reeling from the sudden loss. We went through all the holiday motions. And, of course, the acknowledgment of Jesus’s resurrection reminded us of the hope we have in our faith. But it didn’t change our circumstances. Our beloved was still buried.

Similarly, Easter 2020 feels a little like a letdown. We’re streaming the services and singing the songs, but we still feel the fear and the disappointment. We’re holding onto our religious hope but also feeling gloomy about the current situation and the repercussions of this national shutdown.

In one of his sermons on the Psalms, St. Augustine said: “Easter is a foretaste and promise of the joy that will be ours in the future. It points to something we do not yet possess.”

Maybe now more than ever we need reminders that Easter isn’t the end of the story. Certainly the resurrection of Christ is the crux of our faith. But until Jesus comes back and makes all things right, Easter is a “foretaste and promise.” Because of Easter we have great hope in that which is sure to come, but yet to come.

Years ago Billy Graham said, “Our world today so desperately hungers for hope, yet uncounted people have almost given up. There is despair and hopelessness on every hand. Let us be faithful in proclaiming the hope that is in Jesus.”

Would Graham not say the same to us at this very moment in history? Only Jesus—not our economy, our government, our health, our vaccines, our bank accounts, or even our churches—is our Hope.

“Let us be faithful in proclaiming the hope that is in Jesus.”

Even during a global crisis. Even when we are tired and scared and wavering. Even when Easter feels strange.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
1 Peter 1:3

Our loved ones aren’t resurrected. Our cities and sanctuaries aren’t open. This pandemic isn’t over.

Yet.

Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. And our hope is alive because of it.