Are you feeling grief that our Resurrection Sunday celebration will look vastly different this year? I think we often forget that sorrow and fear were abundantly present on the first Easter morning.
Yes, Jesus’ resurrection conquered death. Yet on resurrection morning, the disciples were huddled in fear, as if death were at their door. The world in which they lived was always close to death. Plague and pestilence, illness and injury—modern medicine did not exist to limit death counts or offer hope.
On that day, as the Easter sunrise broke the night, the disciples’ broken hearts mourned the Messiah’s crucifixion. Their spiritual leaders had demanded death, and their government had delivered death to the Deliverer. The King, the one who promised eternal life, was dead.
So as the Son rose and Easter morning dawned, the disciples locked their doors, bereft of hope, isolating themselves from danger. Outside, women walked to the garden tomb, carrying burial spices for a dead body. They walked with grief, not hope.
Hope was not expected. It was not looked for. Fear had pushed aside all thought of hope, but hope came anyways. It was not dependent on choirs and trumpets and buildings filled with people. It was not dependent on Easter lilies and Easter dresses and family gatherings.
The hope of Easter dawned with simple words—unbelievable words—spoken, not from a pulpit, but in a garden. “He is not here. He is risen, just as he said.”
Easter will arrive in our country this year with Jesus’ followers—and much of humanity—isolated in their homes. It will dawn in a country thinking more about death than most of us are accustomed to. This year’s Easter is stripped of church buildings and pomp and fanfare and all that impresses. Yet the hope of Easter comes regardless of fanfare. It comes even when we are distracted by fear and boredom and isolation and grief and monotony. Hope remains. It always remains. The tomb is empty. “He is not here. He is risen, just as he said.”
There is no doubt that one day soon we will gather again as believers, celebrating with choirs and instruments and voices raised together.
But perhaps this year in this country we will see a bit more fully the Easter of Jesus’ disciples—the reality of fear, the crushing grief of death, and the glorious, unbelievable hope of resurrection. Perhaps we will see more fully that Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday are best celebrated, not just in one-day extravaganzas, but in the daily dying to self through the power of the resurrection, in the daily reforming of lives so that our words and actions are cross-shaped.
Hope remains. It always remains. The tomb is empty. “He is risen, just as he said.” And he will return. The King is coming back—to reign forever with goodness and faithfulness and mercy, when death and sorrow will be no more.
-Amber Beery
