Easter Shadows

I’m a little glad that we got past Easter last week, because I wasn’t feeling Eastery before the actual day, and I didn’t feel Eastery on the actual day, and I haven’t started feeling Eastery in the days since, either. Apparently, I am decidedly in an un-Eastery frame of mind. Is there such a thing as being Scrooge-ish about Easter? Bah humbug to the bunny cakes and jelly beans, marshmallow peeps and egg hunts. Humbug to it all.

I am trusting that Jesus is not shaking his head and sighing because I did not work myself up into an appropriate state of rejoicing last Sunday. It is a relief that Jesus loves me anyway, even if I am crabby on his special resurrection celebration day. Not that Easter wasn’t a nice day last week. My son was still home for spring break, and his Dad joined us for lunch at our favorite Indian buffet for our special Easter meal. We had naan and butter chicken, chai and chana masala. It was delicious. Later that afternoon, I went to a belated birthday party for my good neighbor with tea, chocolate cake, almond cookies, and three kinds of ice cream.

Yes. It was a fine day.

I love Tony Campolo’s “It’s Friday. But Sunday’s Comin'” sermon. I’ve heard it many times. Some years, Easter has dawned that way, a miraculous day when everything is finally made right. Hope blows in on a fresh breeze, and I can smell it, almost even taste it. Maybe the years when I found out around Easter that I was pregnant and would be having a baby when the New Year rolled around. That was a brighter season. Or the years when my Mom and Dad were alive, and we would have family Easter dinners together after church and take pictures in our new Sunday dresses in their front yard by their blooming rhododendrons.

But I’m not fooling myself into believing that Easter has truly arrived, not entirely. Christians like to say that we are an Easter people, and we try to live in that hope. But that’s all it is now: just hope. I think that lately I have been more of a perpetual “Good Friday” person, because the world has seemed dark lately. Easter is a day and it’s great! But then it’s gone, and wouldn’t you know it? We’re back to Good Friday again.

How do we get from no hope to hope? How do I get there on days like these?

Today I am still having to trust the dying. I am having to trust the fertile void which did not miraculously disappear on Easter morning. “Up from the grave He arose!” I used to sing on Easter morning in the Baptist church where I grew up. It’s one of my favorite hymns. Yes. That’s wonderful!

But for the rest of us? For now? We are all still here living in the valley of the shadow of death.