How do we keep the joy of Easter alive?
Let’s face it, friends. We’ll soon be tested on this question. And tested more than once. Yes, Christ’s tomb is empty, and that awesome reality will never change. But how do we keep our “springtime” resurrection hope alive when new storms come our way? How do we thrive (emotionally, relationally, and spiritually) in an ever-present awareness of the fact that – because of the literal resurrection of Jesus – you and I will live forever with our gracious Lord?
Well, for starters, we have to remember the whole Easter story. It didn’t start with friends rejoicing together on an early Sunday morning, but it started with betrayal, abandonment, suffering, and death. For there to be real Easter, there has to be real death.
For some reason known only to God, I am very mindful of this today. The Lord is working on me, even as I write these words, and He is impressing upon my spirit that there are some things that need to die in me. Jesus teaches us that a kernel of wheat has to fall to the ground; otherwise, there is no fruitfulness. If the seed must surrender to the soil, in that sense, then I must be willing to abandon my sinful and selfish ways. This is never easy. And it won’t be easy during this “post-Easter” season either.
And we have to remember all of the waiting that comes with Easter. When will God make all of these hard things right? For Jesus and for those who loved Him, those six hours on the cross must have felt like an eternity. When will God let us see the rest of His promises fulfilled, and when will He redeem all things? And when will God chase away all of this hardship and agony, that we may see the full brightness of the light of His glory? Remember: it felt like a long road from Friday to Sunday.
When it comes to all of our current “delays” in seeing God’s good plan – especially when nothing good at all seems to be happening – can we worship while we wait? Yes! This is the life of genuine, persevering faith to which we have been called in Christ – and the Holy Spirit is always ours to point us in a hopeful direction. He “enlightens the eyes of our hearts” to “the riches of the glorious inheritance” that is already ours in Him (Ephesians 1:18). He works into the depths of our souls “the immeasurable greatness of His power” (Ephesians 1:19), which the Scriptures remind us is the very same “power that raised Jesus from the dead” (Ephesians 1:20)! While we wait, we can rest assured that all of these great things are happening for us and in us – regardless of whether or not we can perceive them at any given moment. (Back to my own sin … I have to deal with it, but I’m not relying on my strength alone.)
After the emotional highs of Easter have subsided, there is always a test of faith.
Helen Joy Davidman was born on April 18, 1915, into a culturally Jewish family in New York City. Joy grew up in the Bronx, and was a child prodigy, devouring H.G. Wells’ “The Outline of History” at age 8, and able to play a score of Chopin on the piano after having looked at it only once. Suffering from scoliosis and other severe medical complications, Joy at age 20 earned a master’s in English Literature at Columbia, and won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition in 1938. She became an accomplished poet and writer. Joy’s family were committed atheists, as was she, and she became a member of the American Communist Party. She married and had two sons.
The marriage was deeply troubled, marked by her husband’s alcoholism and serial infidelities. Communism left the couple disillusioned, and they left the party. Out of her own personal pain and suffering, Joy heard and believed the gospel, and radically converted to Christianity, but the crumbling marriage eventually succumbed to divorce. After publishing her best-known work, “Smoke on the Mountain,” she went to England with her sons, and eventually moved there permanently. In the providence of God, Joy became the wife of C.S. Lewis. She was the love of his life, but metastatic carcinoma took Joy’s life in 1960, resulting in Lewis’s “A Grief Observed” in 1961 (published at the time under a pseudonym).
In July 1960, the brokenhearted C.S. Lewis penned and placed this epitaph on the tombstone of his beloved Joy:
“Here the whole world (stars, water, air,
And field, and forest, as they were
Reflected in a single mind)
Like cast off clothes was left behind
In ashes, yet with hope that she,
Re-born from holy poverty,
In lenten lands, hereafter may
Resume them on her Easter Day”
Mr. Lewis referred to the “lenten lands” in our lives. In your church tradition (or lack thereof, which is perfectly O.K.), you may be unfamiliar with Lent. For centuries, Lent has been regarded as the season of introspection, owning one’s personal sin, and self-denial. It is the necessary preparation for a profound experience of joy, and it includes the 40 days before Easter Sunday. And, in the church year, Easter Sunday begins a 50-day period called “Eastertide,” and all of those days are reserved for protracted feasting and celebration – it’s the season for telling folks again and again the good news that “Christ is risen indeed!”
If you’re paying attention, you may have noticed something important: the Feast is longer than the fast. Indeed it is. “Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, ‘Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give Him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure’ – for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, ‘Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’ And he said to me, ‘These are the true words of God’ (Revelation 19:6-9).”
For those of us who are in Christ – found in Him and trusting in Him – there is no “post-Easter” anything. Because of the empty tomb, death has lost its final word. Alive in our Lord Jesus Christ, you and I are Easter people, always and forever.
The Feast is longer than the fast! I can live with that.
Pastor Charles
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