Easter Sunday. Resurrection. Walking out of the tomb of sin and death and looking forward into new life. That’s what we just celebrated, right? But a notice about one of my posts from a year ago popped up on Facebook yesterday, and, after reading it, I thought we also need to look back and celebrate what we have survived. Not celebrate in a party and streamers sort of way, but at least mark it somehow, like a funeral celebrates a life.
A Palm Sunday 2020 memory
**I use a paper calendar called the Jesus-Centered Planner, which has sections after each month and quarter to review and to look ahead. I struggled looking ahead this time last year and shared on Facebook:
I was just working on my Jesus-centered planner, reviewing March and preparing for April and this quarter’s goals and dreams. How can I even write goals in this unknown? It seems futile and foolish. I got distracted with Facebook and it turned out that that was exactly where I needed to be. I tuned in to a watch party for our 5:00 pm church service but at the end, just in time to hear the benediction:
May Yahweh bless you and protect you;
may Yahweh make His face shine on you
and be gracious to you;
may Yahweh look with favor on you
and give you peace. ~Numbers 6:24-26 HCSB
May Yahweh make His face shine on you? Is His face shining right now? This is the start of week 4 of staying home due to Covid-19. Schools are closed. Restaurants are closed or only offering pick-up orders. Libraries and gyms are closed, and now even pools and beaches will be closed in Minneapolis this summer!
Churches are closed. Churches are closed on the night before Palm Sunday. Churches are closed for Holy Week and for Easter and for “He is risen! He is risen indeed!”
In the evening of that first day of the week, the disciples were gathered together with the doors locked because of their fear…
John 20:19 HCSB
This must be something like what the disciples felt on Friday after the crucifixion. Jesus was dead. The tomb was closed. A grief-filled Sabbath. Days spent hiding from the Jews who had had Jesus crucified. What do we do now? Goals? Dreams? Amidst chaos and grief and fear?!
“What does the future hold?”
“We are scared.”
“We are isolated, staying in our houses.”
All things being said by us today. It may not feel like His face is shining on us today.
All things said by a handful of men and women 2000 years ago. The Light was no longer shining on them, living among them.
And yet.
The tomb reopened. Life returned. The Light shone again. And the disciples had a whole new reality, a new normal that they would never have predicted or planned. It cost them their livelihoods, their relationships, often their lives.
This is not our new normal. This is our new normal FOR NOW. And it may well take livelihoods, social connections, lives. This will not be easy. But The Light is still shining.
May His face shine on you.
Even in the dark.
Especially in the dark.
An Easter 2021 celebration
Today, exactly a year after writing that, it just happened to appear as a Facebook memory…on Easter Sunday!
That dark has continued not for three days, but for more than 365 days! The last year has been hard, perhaps even harder than we anticipated. We are still not back to normal and, with all of the things we have survived, many won’t ever go back to the same normal they knew.
And yet.
My family attended an in-person service yesterday in a church filled to about 20% capacity, everyone masked, and hand sanitizer stations by the doors.
But when the voices of that 4-person “choir” exploded into the sanctuary, singing, “JESUS CHRIST IS RISEN TODAY”…it was like coming up out of water to a deep breath, to blaring light. That song reclaimed the last year and said the darkness is coming to an end, even if our grief continues for a long time.
From the night before Palm Sunday last year to Easter this year, it feels not like a new Holy Week but a year-long one. It feels like we have been in the tomb for the whole year. But it also feels like maybe the stone is finally being rolled away – and we can see that His face was shining on us the whole time.
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