For the last few years, we’ve had an Easter tradition of popping open a bottle of bubbly with family (church and otherwise) to ring in Eastertide.
And I say Eastertide, not Easter Sunday, because in the church calendar Easter is a season to itself, a fifty-day-long celebration of the single most pivotal event in history, the event that signaled the defeat of death and the Devil in one fell swoop. We break fasts, if we held them. We scatter symbols of resurrection (eggs and bunnies) across church lawns. We feast. We imbibe. We plant flowers. We run naked through the fields (well, sometimes our children do, after bath-time). We party hard at the break of good news.
I’ve saved each of the champagne corks from previous years and Sharpied the year on them, partially because I’m a sentimental old coot, and partially because I want to count the Easters as they come. These days are arguably more valuable to me and my church family than birthdays and anniversaries, because they are a time that we come together to remember the specific, bodily resurrection of our Lord and Savior. And what better way to celebrate the embodied rising of Jesus in full-bodied ways – feasting, dancing, and singing our way through Eastertide?
We talk of times and days and seasons and I often hear the worn phrase that we shouldn’t rely on these things. Of course, no Sonrise service or Easter anthem will ever replace Christ in me, but is it not fitting to remember that on a specific date a little less than 2000 years ago, a real Jesus physically busted out of a real rock-bound tomb, overcoming the curse of death in a singular moment in space and time?
I think it is. And I think the LORD of all things (including death), whose first miracle was to transform water to wine so the party could go on, might be well pleased with some holy revelry.
I find N. T. Wright’s thoughts on this (from Surprised by Hope) to be cogent and convincing:
“…Many churches now hold Easter vigils, as the Orthodox church has always done, but in many cases they are…too tame by half. Easter is about the wild delight of God’s creative power…we ought to shout Alleluias instead of murmuring them; we should light every candle in the building instead of only some; we should give every man, woman, child, cat, dog, and mouse in the place a candle to hold; we should have a real bonfire… Every step back from that is a step toward an ethereal or esoteric Easter experience, and the thing about Easter is that it is neither ethereal nor esoteric. It’s about the real Jesus coming out of the real tomb and getting God’s real new creation under way.
But my biggest problem starts on Easter Monday. I regard it as absurd and unjustifiable that we should spend forty days keeping Lent, pondering what it means, preaching about self-denial, being at least a little gloomy, and then bringing it all to a peak with Holy Week, which in turn climaxes in Maundy Thursday and Good Friday…and then, after a rather odd Holy Saturday, we have a single day of celebration.
…Easter week itself ought not to be the time when all the clergy sigh with relief and go on holiday. It ought to be an eight-day festival, with champagne served after morning prayer or even before, with lots of alleluias and extra hymns and spectacular anthems. Is it any wonder people find it hard to believe in the resurrection of Jesus if we don’t throw our hats in the air? Is it any wonder we find it hard to live the resurrection if we don’t do it exuberantly in our liturgies? Is it any wonder the world doesn’t take much notice if Easter is celebrated as simply the one-day happy ending tacked on to forty days of fasting and gloom?
…we should be taking steps to celebrate Easter in creative new ways: in art, literature, children’s games, poetry, music, dance, festivals, bells, special concerts, anything that comes to mind. This is our greatest festival. Take Christmas away, and in biblical terms you lose two chapters at the front of Matthew and Luke, nothing else. Take Easter away, and you don’t have a New Testament; you don’t have a Christianity; as Paul says, you are still in your sins…
He is risen! He is risen indeed! Feast with wildness and purpose and joy, friends, and don’t stop at Easter Sunday. Ring in the resurrection well!