Easter Arrives

Don’t you love arriving somewhere? Back when we did such things. Arriving at the concert. At the game. At the restaurant. At the theater. At the party. At the Metra or el stop without delays. I still text my mom when the plane lands: “arrived.”

One of our favorite places to arrive each year is our beloved church on Addison for the Easter Vigil. Many years, spring has arrived by then. Preparations have been made. And we eagerly, joyfully, and boldly participate in our favorite liturgy of the year, more multi-sensory, more embodied than any. Fire. Light. Candles. Water. Oil. Incense. Bread. Wine. Stories. New members. Banners. Processions. Singing. Goosebumps. Tears.

The Vigil of Easter is like arriving home. Or like arriving in heaven. In fact, Orthodox Christians describe divine worship as being in paradise already, participating in the heavenly liturgy portrayed in the book of Revelation. And that’s how many of us feel about the Easter Vigil. A taste of heaven. Christ is risen. And all is right with the world

Except this year that is not the way it feels. Quarantined. The entire world locked in a tomb of fear and despair. This year we don’t feel like we are in the promised land of Easter, as some prayers name it. We feel more like the Israelites in Egypt, or better perhaps, in exile. Longing for our homeland. We are dry bones lying in a desolate valley. We feel like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego thrown into the fire. We are Mary weeping in the tomb, “they have taken my Lord, and I do not where they have laid him.”

One Jewish man wrote about the oddness of celebrating Passover this year when families cannot gather with others. He mused on the question, “why is this night different from all other nights,” asked by the youngest child. Surely this Easter Vigil is different from any we’ve ever attended. Yet every Passover seder is different. As he writes: “Freedom from slavery is forever current: alas, someone is always enslaved by something. Only the tyrant changes.” We never really arrive. And of course, this year reflecting on the plagues at the first Passover brings an eerie chill.

Maybe that’s why celebrating Passover at night, and celebrating the Easter Vigil at night is so powerful. This isn’t an Easter morning service that is only bright and cheery. It’s not that the resurrection takes away the night, takes away the sorrow, takes away the fear. Rather, the light shines brightly in the midst of the darkness. The light shines in the midst of our losses and uncertainties this night.

One writer (Ed Foley) asserts that we often imagine Easter as the “great shade shatterer, gloom dispenser, darkness-obliterator. But that’s not what we proclaim tonight. The mystery we celebrate, the mystery of Christ’s dying and rising, the mystery of our lives—he goes on is “that our ultimate hope and ultimate joy can only be birthed in the blackness of night through an immersion in the darkness of the grave . . . so that tomb can transform into womb and light may dawn.”

So we indeed sing, this is the night.

This is the night God leads us out of the quarantine of despair and fear into freedom. This is the night God puts flesh on our dry bones and brings us home. This is the night when God is with us in the fire even we cannot even imagine what the future holds. This is the night that Christ speaks our name—our eyes wet with tears, as were Mary’s in the garden. Resurrection is happening tonight, now, among us. The Spirit is breathing new life on us, in us, among us. In our homes and in our hearts. In our memories and in our hopes.

We may not be arriving at the Easter we expected several months ago. But one part of the liturgy may be more powerful and profound than any in recent memory. It is the moment we recommit to live our baptismal promises. It is our call to action. It is our response to resurrection. It is our desire, with God’s help, to build a new world, a new country, a new church, a new congregation. Will you live among God’s people? Will you gather faithfully, even in your home for worship? Will you work to end all forms of injustice, oppression, and prejudice? Will you continue in our holy work of dismantling racism and caring for the earth and the environment? We may not be able to leave our homes yet, but we are sent into the world to be the risen body of Christ.. Easter is dawning and it is time to imagine what new thing God is doing among us.

Though we shelter in place, we do not forget the fragile and those in need. We seek new ways to care for one another. To check on neighbors. To express gratitude to medical professionals, delivery workers, first responders. And Easter arrives.

We long for that day when the stone is rolled away. We hope for the day when social distancing is past, our masks are off and we begin to see others previously camouflaged by our own prejudice or indifference. And Easter arrives.

This is the night. Easter has arrived. And in the darkness light shines. Freedom dawns. Hope burns brightly. We step boldly into the future. And this night as always, alleluia is our song.