Churches around the world will be filled with empty pews on Easter Sunday morning, so I’m inviting you to experience Easter in a unique way this year.
Since quitting church back in 2013, I’ve only visited a few churches. Over the past few years, my family and I have only attended Easter Sunday services. It’s been the one Sunday out of the year I felt obligated to attend.
As a child, I loved going church on Easter. For me, Easter wasn’t about egg hunts and candy-filled baskets (although that was a part of my childhood, too); instead, I loved getting dressed up in new clothes, singing songs like “Up From the Grave He Arose,” and seeing the pews packed with members and visitors. The production of Easter Sunday service excited me more than the idea of a gift-giving bunny.
Prior to quitting church, I became less enamored with pomp and circumstance and increasingly more attracted to raw and real love. I desperately wanted Easter service to be a proclamation of all-inclusive love, but my brand of religion had strong convictions about not including people who didn’t subscribe to their belief system. Attendees were expected to sit like sheep and accept one man’s interpretation of Scripture, which was often a rejection of people who didn’t abide by the prescribed message. My last Easter service as a church member left me wondering if the Church really loved people, or Jesus for that matter.
Even after quitting church, I’d begrudgingly go to Easter Sunday service because I couldn’t not go. Never once in my 44 years have I missed church on Easter. Honestly, though, the past two or three Easter services I attended were less than enthusiastic. I’ve critiqued the hype surrounding Easter Sunday services before, but I suppose I could equally critique a boring service in which even the resurrection story seemed stale. But that’s not what this post is about.
This year, due to Covid-19, churches aren’t having services in their buildings. According to my social media feeds, services will be held via Facebook Live streams and drive-in style. For the first time in my life, Easter services won’t be available to attend in person, and I am relieved.
For several years, I’ve longed to sit on my deck in solitude with a steaming cup of coffee instead of attending Easter service. This year, my desire is granted without feeling the guilt associated with denying a ritualistic, Southern obligation.
Here’s what I want to say to you if you are a church member and feeling sad about not being able to attend church on Easter Sunday: I respectfully invite you to skip your church’s Facebook Live service. I know it’s hard to fathom skipping your church’s most-important service of the year; but this year is all kinds of different and screwy already anyway. Embrace it.
Instead, I grant you permission (not that you need it, but you might feel that you do) to grab a cup of hot, frothy coffee and spend your morning on your back deck. Listen to the voice within, whether you call it Holy Spirit or Self. That’s the voice you can trust above all others.
If you’re a devout Christian, read Scripture for yourself and see if it speaks to you; you might find that it means something different to you than what your pastor tells you.
Better yet, skip the reading and let the resurrection of nature speak to you. While sickness and death are at the forefront of our minds during these strange days, nature is coming alive — flowers are blooming, birds are still singing, grass is growing. And if Scripture is to be believed, the earth sings anyway, so why not join in? Is there a better morning than Easter to do so?
Maybe, for the first time in your life, Easter will be about your own resurrection — the one where all things, including you, are made new.
