Easter is one of my favourite times of year, for a whole host of reasons. The sun has usually started to come out, the days are longer, everywhere I look there is more green and blue than there has been for months, there are new flowers appearing each day… Usually I take some time off work around this time as well (just one more week to go!), so I’m also looking forward to getting a break. But the best bit about Easter, invariably, is the opportunity to become immersed in the “Easter Story” for a little while.
Over the next week or so, there will be lots of church services and events around the world, helping us to home in on Easter and the enormity of what God did for us. And we’ll have our own family traditions to look forward to – some focused on our Christian faith, and plenty focused on simply getting the family together. My husband and I also look forward to old friends returning to the area to see their families, so that we can sneak in some catch-ups as well. Easter is a busy time with lots to look forward to, but at its heart is a focus on a joy like no other – Jesus’ resurrection is a heart-breakingly wonderful thing, and, to be honest, it blows pretty much everything else out of the water.
The warmth and excitement of Christmas is something I love to experience time and time again. It’s cosy, comfortable and heart-warming. In fact, it seems to me that Christmas gets its edge because of Easter. For me, it is only when I remember the events at Easter that I get to see the bigger picture of Christmas, and it becomes a little uncomfortable. And rightly so I think.
Easter, however, forces us to experience that discomfort as we go through Holy Week. It’s right there, in front of us, hard to ignore. We go into Palm Sunday with that slightly difficult knowledge of what is to come, feeling like we’re celebrating too early – we know what happens next and what has to take place before the real celebration begins. And over the week things come crashing down. All that excitement turns to tragedy in just a few days.
Even with the sure knowledge of Easter Sunday just around the corner, Holy Week is hard. But it is also beautiful. I think we’ve all had our “where is God” moments, when we can’t find Him or hear Him and struggle to turn ourselves to face Him. Holy Week is a reminder of those moments, while being an opportunity to get more of God in our lives, to build our relationships with Him. Holy Week lets us set aside time to spend with God, which is made all the sweeter by the memory of times without Him.
When I was little, I used to go on holiday with my family to France, camping for a month each summer. I always remember the feel of the carpet when we got home after every holiday. After 4 weeks of walking bare-foot pretty much everywhere, mainly on sand, rocks and grass, carpet would feel unbelievably luxurious and soft. The “joy” of it would feel that much greater because I’d experienced a lack of it. That’s a trivial example, but I think it goes some way to explaining what I’m trying to say about Easter. Because we go through a reminder of a lack of God, the knowledge of Him becomes sweeter, sharper, clearer.
Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services or meditations give us some time to think about what God did for us, and the experience that Jesus had to go through. They allow us to dwell on the pain and to soak in that necessary realisation of the trauma of Holy Week. It’s time to consider how that sacrifice impacts us, and what it means for our relationship with God, with ourselves and with others. We can ask ourselves what it means for our lives, that God sent Jesus to suffer in that way.
Then, after a couple of days of allowing ourselves to consider that pain and sacrifice in as much depth as we can bear, we get to emerge into the absolute joy of Easter Sunday. And somehow, as a joy nestled in a backdrop of sadness, it is so much greater and so much more profound. We know what was lost, what Jesus went through, to reach this moment of joy and so we can rejoice more deeply.
For me, the sunrise service on Easter Sunday is a contender for best moment of the year. It might be raining (one year I think it even snowed) with service sheets falling apart as we try to coax our early morning voices to manage a tune, but we are getting to celebrate the moment when God saved each and every one of us. We get to come together and shout out those words – HE IS RISEN INDEED! It’s a moment that defeats all other moments – God has won, and He has invited us to take a part in that victory.
In that victory we can find reassurance. As we head into Holy Week this year, you might be feeling that God is nowhere near, or He might feel closer than ever. You might be experiencing your own moment of joy, or that moment of joy might feel further off than ever before. Or somewhere in between. Just because the church calendar has brought us to Easter, doesn’t mean that our lives tally and that we will wake on Easter Sunday with that same joy mirrored in our own lives. But the victory and joy of Jesus’ resurrection is a promise from God that we will experience that joy when we are reunited with Him.
So, if I were to give a word of advice, or encourage you to do something this Easter, I think it would be to immerse yourself in the pain of the crucifixion and then to try to allow yourself to know the joy of the resurrection, whether or not your life today holds that joy. Take comfort from the promise that God loves you with an impossibly endless and all-encompassing love and that He has joy ready for you in an eternity that we simply can’t grasp. Each year, we can face Good Friday because we know that we will reach Easter Sunday. Remember that when you are facing your own Good Friday – God will give you your Easter Sunday!