If Easter Never Came

I did not intend to write this message. But yesterday was Easter, and there have been some thoughts on my mind that have been demanding a voice, that are too important to let fade in silence. Easter has always had a lot of significance for me, but this year, it positively changed me. This was not because of fun activities I participated in, or special messages I heard, or worship I felt.

It was because, for me, it never came.

Easter is the most important holiday in Christianity. I realize that in saying this I am going against thousands of people who would hold banners and holler that Christmas, the holiday named after the Author of Christianity himself, trumps this other tiny day that blooms for a brief moment in the youth of spring. But Christmas celebrates the fact that Christ lived. Easter declares that He lives. And this is the truth that saves me.

Usually, on Easter, I arise early, and in the dark of a still and pressing night, I climb a mountain. And then, sitting there on the peak or the summit of the only hill I can find in the city, I watch the sun swell over the horizon, lighting a blinding golden fire in the sky, filling the whole atmosphere with yellow and gold and pink and orange…and light. So much light that I can no longer remember my climb of darkness. And then I sing. 

“He is risen, he is risen, shout it out with joyful voice! He has burst his three days’ prison, let the whole wide earth rejoice! Death is conquered, man is free…Christ has won the victory!”

The words I can only sing haltingly, the notes pouring out with no precision and little beauty. But they mingle with the sunrise, and it is, somehow, enough. Darkness swallowed up in light. Death swallowed up in life. Despair swallowed up in hope. The end swallowed up in a new beginning.

But this year, there was no sunrise. There were no Easter hymns. And the world, my world, did not begin again. I could not find Christ. I could not find him on the subway or in the church, or on the grounds of His own temple. I tried. I looked for Him. But Easter morning turned to afternoon, turned to evening, and I found myself walking dark, foreign streets alone, shivering in the cold, my feet throbbing from uncomfortable high heels, wondering why Easter never came.

Normally when I am lonely, I know that God is there beside me. But there is another loneliness that is deeper, that swallows hope and quenches light. Last night, on those shadowy streets, I felt the loneliness of looking for God and not finding Him—like looking for the North Star and finding that, not only was it gone, but that every other star had also fallen from the sky, leaving it a vast sheet of everlasting darkness. The world felt as empty as if He had deserted all of creation and left it to spiral onward to its own self-destruction.

No, Easter did not come. And I wondered why I had to feel that—why when I desired to feel hope and life and light, I should be left in darkness. And then, quietly, and with the perfect teaching of a loving Father, a different question was put into my mind—What if, 2,000 years ago in a dusty city in a far-off land, that first Easter had not come?

What if Mary had gone to the tomb, and the stone was there, and it was not empty? What would the world be like today?

If, on that Sunday morning of long ago, Mary had found the body of her beloved Master, undisturbed in its borrowed tomb, my empty Easter would have been every Easter afterward. And every day. For every person in this crumbling, trembling, crying world.

The sacrament would be just another piece of bread. The temple would be just another building. And Easter would be just another day.

I know what life would feel like without Easter. I felt it yesterday, and I am full of gratitude for that gift. Because today I woke up with the sun and fell on my knees and thanked my God that the one time it mattered most, Easter came.