What does it mean, anyway?
This funny holiday, smack dab in the middle of the cold Spring that defines northern New England, hardly seems like a redemption song.
Yesterday, the wind howled, the air was cold, and the snow -- yes, the snow -- blew across my porch. It was like so many Easters I’ve seen in these parts of New Hampshire and Vermont. Kids wore hats searching for eggs. I froze while hiding them. Not all of the eggs were found.
Maybe Easter is a bit harder and less Spring-like in these parts compared to the rest of the nation, but it’s not just the weather which is different here. In my circles in northern New England, Easter feels like a decidedly unreligious holiday. My New Hampshire nephew attended a driver’s education class on Easter this year. My New Hampshire son had soccer practice scheduled on Easter Sunday (he did not go). Is everyone here so inclined to pass the holiday by without consideration of its significance?
And yet as I consider these apparent transgressions, I find myself wondering, what is the significance of Easter? Why does this holiday occur? Why does it matter, especially today?
Even though no one would mistake the crew around my Easter dinner table for acolytes to the christian or catholic priesthood, it was still surprising to gauge that so few of the adults, and far fewer of the kids, at my table knew the historical origins or religious symbolism of Easter. Yesterday I felt like a CCD teacher explaining the 101 of Good Friday and resurrection.
Even the meaning of salvation itself seemed foreign to my dinner crew. Why would anyone die for my sins? Why?
In the hopes of redeeming the un-sought redeemer, let me suggest a simple interpretation, one bereft (I hope) of too much dogma and one containing (I hope) just enough spirit to capture the imagination and soul.
Easter is about forgiveness.
At the basic level of existence, as we come from a hard Winter, as we see still see and feel cold air and around us, we must let go and welcome the warmth of Spring.
At a much deeper level, as we consider the stories of Jesus’s resurrection and even Passover itself, we are reminded of sacrifice deep and symbolic (unleavened bread, the garden in Gethsemane). We are reminded that Spring comes at a price.
Yes, come Spring, we know that there is the need to plant seeds and renew our faith and hope in the future. But that renewal comes after sacrifice, even disappointment and hurt, in the past.
In that vein, I’d suggest that Easter is the hardest holiday to celebrate. Whether you observe Lent or not, this is a time when sacrifices are recorded and acquire value. Easter is more than sweet candy in the mouth on a cold day, or hot ham and potatoes chased by cool white wine. It’s about the bitter which passed before -- the dry skin which comes with Winter, the heartache of losing a beloved in the snowy part of the year, or the hardness a family felt as it struggled to heat a home, pay bills, and feed everyone.
For many Americans, and indeed for citizens across the globe, this past Winter and Fall has been a time of dramatic hurt. A hurt larger than usual for this time of year. Which meant that Easter 2009 seemed to me to be subdued. Sure, everyone is grateful for the relative improvement in warmth (not to mention the stock market), but it’s a quiet appreciation we feel. The economic fall has been so far and deep. In that vein, the Easter holiday comes and we stand in the cold wind, chastened by what has come before and uncertain by what might follow.
So let me take you to the past. About 30 years ago, my father provocatively opened discussion at Easter brunch with this question: did Jesus need to die and rise from the dead in order for Easter to occur?
It was a great question -- not too dissimilar from the kind which I had heard from him before at thousand different forums (he loved to push us), but this was just provocative enough to make everyone at the table stop their routine, listen, and argue. OK, maybe scream. I remember leaving that table about four hours later -- worn-out and terribly satisfied with the arguing, debating, and questioning we had all undergone. It was a lesson in debate, no question. More importantly, it was a lesson in questioning and independent thought.
Did Jesus need to die and rise from the dead in order for Easter to occur?
I don’t know that answer today. In fact, I don’t know that answer today anymore than I did then.
At the time, some 30 years ago, I remember arguing that Jesus did not have to die for Easter to exist. And I remember feeling pretty good about my answers -- unlike a good catholic, I suggested that grace alone saved us. Good works mattered, but the promise of salvation was due more to our willingness to accept our sinful state, and ask for forgiveness, than anything else.
Today?
I don’t feel so good about those answers. Today I feel that someone has to sacrifice, even it’s to encourage the rest of us, the cowardly, to be strong and do the same. Someone has to help the rest of us do the right thing. For whom will we provide salvation? Who will encourage us to take in the afflicted, to clean them up? Who will tell us to give them some water and put them to bed?
During Easter, Jesus gives us that answer. He provides that leadership. Tempted fully as a human being, he rises to do more. He sacrifices himself for us with no promise that the future will be brighter for him or us.
And in so doing, I’d suggest that Jesus -- and all who sacrifice without knowing that the future will be brighter -- commits the ultimate act of Easter. He forgives unconditionally. He takes the raw and broken and unworthy matter of our human existence, and repairs it with a few words and a gesture.
Each of us is capable of doing the same. We are all capable of the kind gesture, the kind word, and the kind act. Even in the cold wind, we can provide shelter. We can heal and repair by our very presence.
More than 35 years ago, I remember a call that came in the middle in the night that tested this theory. My uncle was calling to say this was it -- he was going to die, he was going throw himself into a waterfall. My mother begged him to stop. We all begged him to stop. We stood shaking around a red table, wondering if this moment would pass. Our uncle. Our uncle on the edge of waterfall. His lonely struggle with addiction stood before us with no easy answers.
That night came and went. He did not jump.
Over the next 20 years, as my mother and her siblings and his children and love ones tried to help -- sometimes foolishly, sometimes heroically. They did what was required for Easter. They sacrificed and forgave. No sweet candies awaited them. My uncle, god rest his soul, died alone. He never fully recovered.
In my lifetime, my uncle was a child to his mother and father. In my lifetime, he was a brother to his siblings and a father to his children. He was imperfect, stubborn, and maybe worse.
But was he a child of God? Were his arms stretched out for love? And if so, can we forgive him?
This is the meaning of Easter to me. The “holiday” asks more than we might initially think. Maybe here -- in the cold north of New England -- it’s a little clearer that this is a bittersweet holiday, a time not for rejoicing but for bittersweet contemplation.
“To err is human, to forgive divine” (Alexander Pope).
