Secular Easter, Spiritual Easter

The secular view of Easter Sunday is  families dressing up and looking good in church. The spiritual view is God’s vindication and resurrection of a guiltless man who suffered at the hands of angry mobs, politicians, and even his own friends. Before Easter we remember our complicity in the Crucifixion, and following this realization, our redemption and freedom in the Resurrection. If we consider Easter Sunday merely a target day for reducing social distancing, the significance of Jesus’ persecution and sacrifice is lost.  If we think of Lent as the countdown to re-employment, we have turned God’s most dramatic intervention in human history into a celebration for the Stock Market on Easter Monday.

We have already lost the “Christmas season” to commercial interests, because the sales leading up to Christmas have become the most important theme of Advent. Waiting for the coming of Christ does not get much play in the media. Easter should not become an economic target co-opted by politicians and commercial interests.

 But most of the population of the United States will continue to suffer the social distancing and infection rates more associated with Lent and Holy Week than the Resurrection. The day after the President set his target on Easter, Reverend Al Sharpton commented that the President neglected to notice that the Crucifixion precedes the Resurrection. In the same way the Lenten season precedes the Crucifixion. Many of us are still observing Lent by social distancing and practicing good disinfecting habits.

Lent and the Crucifixion are intended to remind us of our false expectations of Christ, our shortcomings, and our sharing the suffering of Jesus.  If we are inconvenienced by social distancing, Jesus was abandoned by his closest friends. If we have temporarily lost our employment, Jesus lost his life.  If we are disciplined to frequently wash and sanitize our homes, Jesus was disciplined by beatings and mockery. Our cross is a relatively light burden.

Holy Week includes both Passover and Good Friday this year.  Rather than targeting these observances for relief from social distancing or unemployment, may we remember how God intervened in human affairs for our redemption from oppression and made the sacrifice that turned our mourning into joy. We are not merely observing holidays, but celebrating the visible love of God. We should not be celebrating the productivity of service employees compelled to return to work.

What might Easter/ Passover mean in the struggle against CoVID-19? It could mean the beginning of contracted spread of the virus. It could mean the arrival of unemployment checks in our mailboxes.  It most likely will mean the transformation of spring bulbs into flowering glory. Surely this holy season should remind us of our spiritual redemption from darkness as well as our hopeful physical redemption from an invisible enemy we have resisted by faithful practice, by our faith, “the substance of things unseen.”

Bill Tucker
Art:  The Entombment of Christ, (1602–1603), Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome
Photo: Lenten Banners Self-Distancing, Schiro Family