By Robin King
Easter means many things to many people, doesn’t it?
Eggs, bunnies, chocolate, lilies, big family dinners, a long weekend, spring cleaning, going to church … We all have the rituals that we engage in.
When I was little, we’d get up, hunt for Easter eggs, go to church, come home for “The Big Meal,” and then go back to church for the evening service. Did that every year until I was twenty-something. It’s what we did.
I’ve been wondering about “ritual” a lot lately. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not disparaging rituals – after all, a ritual is something that we do because of its meaning. Maybe that meaning has become ceremonial or stylized in some way, but there must still be meaning. Otherwise, it’s just another thing that we do because we’ve always done it that way.
We do a lot of rituals in church. Some people might think too much. But we do ritual because it has meaning and it reminds us of our story and helps to relate that story to our daily lives.
At least it should, and when it doesn’t maybe we should look a little deeper and try and figure out why. Maybe we’ve lost something.
Sometimes, I’m challenged by how we do Easter. We know how the story goes – and if you don’t, you should read it because it’s a great story, full of drama and action, fear and hope, tears and joy. But sometimes, that’s as far as we go.
It’s a story and we know how the story ends. We might even know what the story is supposed to mean to us. Maybe we have questions.
I have questions … not challenges, questions. And in thinking about these questions, I think I’ve come a little closer to the story. Maybe you’ve thought about these things, too.
Like “The Last Supper.” We can call it that – in retrospect – but the disciples didn’t know that, did they?
They thought that they were celebrating the Passover meal with Jesus (a ritual meal itself which reminded Hebrews of God freeing them from slavery in Egypt). So the story from which we have built the central ritual of communion was dinner. A family dinner, for that matter, because that’s what the Passover meal was about, families remembering their heritage with God.
Do you remember God at your family meal? Do we remember that we are one family when we celebrate communion?
In a world such as ours, can we truly understand the horror and pain of the crucifixion? And I’m not suggesting that we can’t, by the way.
If you could put yourself right there in the story, imagine yourself at the hillside where Jesus was crucified, what would you be feeling?
It would be nice to think that we would be horrified, that we would try to help Jesus. But would we? Or would we just think, oh, it’s another crucifixion – that’s probably ten this week, at least – like another shooting or another war, another death?
Maybe we would recognize that this was something different, but what if you were there: what would you think? Or feel?
I often think of that old spiritual “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”
Maybe our Good Friday is tempered a bit by the fact that we know how this part of the story ends: resurrection on Easter Day.
Yay, Easter Day!
But what if you were there, what if you were Mary Magdalene or Peter or the other disciple that went with him?
What do you think Mary felt when she arrived at the tomb that morning, having watched Jesus die, and found it empty?
Surprise?
Hurt?
Fear?
What was her first thought?
It wasn’t until she saw Jesus – and she thought he was the gardener at first – that she knew he was alive. So, was Mary surprised by the resurrection?
I guess that’s my biggest question: are we surprised anymore?
Are we so comfortable that we know how the story goes, that we no longer wonder at it, that we are no longer moved by its power, challenged by its meaning?
What do you wonder about?