Easter, Light

I was never good at finding Easter eggs. I remember standing back and watching other kids find them, as though I expected the eggs to come to me. (I was an only child.) I was good at dressing up, but I sometimes wore my new Easter finery on Palm Sunday, lest I be too proud, my mother told me, too focused on my new clothes rather than on the “meaning” of Easter.

This Easter morning at our church, we had a fine breakfast spread; we “flowered” the cross (a relatively new tradition for us Presbyterians that I love for its symbolism of new life); and then the worship service was filled with glorious music and celebration along with a call to honor Christ’s sacrificial love by being Christ’s hands and feet in the world. (A particularly apt message for the times we’re living in.) As always, I shed tears in response to the readings and the music. And the memories that surfaced linger today and call me to write about them.

My earliest memories of Easter mornings involve waking up while it was still dark so we could attend the sunrise service at our little church. We left home as light was just breaking in the East, and we sang the hymns and heard the scripture readings and at least part of the sermon in the dusk-dark church—until the moment when sunlight flooded the stained glass windows on the East side of the sanctuary. I remember it as a burst of light, and even at an early age, I imagined that must have been what Christ’s resurrection was like: sudden, brilliant, defying description. One Easter morning in particular, the light broke in broad shafts through those windows, as though it had been painted on the air, and dazzled the altar table covered with white lilies. That image has stayed with me throughout my life. Beautiful. Hopeful.

After church came the parts I looked forward to: the Easter basket, the dinner of ham and sweet potatoes and green bean casserole and homemade rolls and at least two kinds of dessert. But those things happened only after my family had honored their dead. Immediately after the early service, my parents collected the lilies they had bought and contributed to the flower display on the altar, and we piled in the car and delivered those lilies to the graves of my paternal grandparents (of whom I had no memory) and later on, my maternal grandfather and my dad’s beloved older brother. Here was the somber reminder that between the moment of death and the moment of glorious light was this time when bodies moldered in the grave—a difficult image for adults to deal with, let alone a child. And yet, that’s what we did. Every Easter Sunday for all my growing-up years, we acknowledged the presence of the dead-and-gone, the holes their absence left in our lives, having just witnessed the hope of the light that blessed those lilies in the church.

We don’t have a sunrise service at the church I attend now. And the cemeteries my family visited when I was a child are hundreds of miles away, so although there are many more beloved dead, there are no more trips to cemeteries. But the memories return, as does the presence of those long absent from my life. This Easter Sunday, I felt their presence in the sounds and images of light, hope, and renewal.

I pray the same hope and light for you, no matter what your faith tradition may be.