Even Easter is Just an Echo

Three hours ago I was sitting in a church building mourning the death of the Lord Jesus two thousand years ago. Eleven hours from now I'll be in another church building mourning a much more recent departure. A friend's mother passed away from cancer last Tuesday, and tomorrow morning Kim and I will, in what limited way we can, join him in the mingled sorrow and relief that accompanies the death of a Christian after a prolonged illness. Shu-Lang quietly passed into fullness of joy in the presence of her Savior, leaving a gaping chasm in the lives of those who have the (mis?)fortune to remain. We know we should rejoice with her, but we feel quite unable to participate in a joy we cannot witness and in which we cannot join. Her final healing is abstraction; her absence is concrete.

Tomorrow is the day before Easter. On Sunday morning, as young girls file into church with their pressed pink dresses and patent leather shoes and mothers work determinedly to remove the last smears of chocolate from the cheeks of their sons, what hope will Easter offer to my friend and to his father? Will warm wishes and hearty laughs ease his ache, or will his grief be a pane-glass window between him and the others, allowing him to see the celebration but keeping him from being embraced by it? Can the most golden-tongued preacher offer anything to my friend but the cold comfort that once upon a time God's Son rose from the dead?

Tomorrow is the day before Easter, the day we remember the long, lonely silence between the death-cries of Calvary and the triumphal shout of resurrection. In a way, that Saturday never really ended. Yes, Jesus awoke in the dark of the tomb and emerged victorious over death, sin, and Satan, and ascended to his rightful place at the right hand of the Father on high. Hallelujah! But his followers have yet to fully share in that victory. We have eternal life but are still subject to death. Sin's chains are broken but the shards pierce us still. Satan is no longer our master, but he haunts our windows and doors. We still live between cross and crown. We're still waiting on daybreak.

You see, even Easter is just an echo, a reverberation through time declaring that just as the Lord has risen, so we will all rise. My friend's hope tomorrow is not merely that Jesus didn't stay dead, but that through his life we will all come alive in the end. At the end of all things Shu-Lang will burst from the ground and shine like the sun in the kingdom of her Father. She will shower laughter upon her sons, and they will turn together with unshielded eyes and unveiled faces towards the Light of the world. Tomorrow, just as Jesus' followers once laid his body in Nicodemus' tomb, Shu-Lang will be laid in the ground. And one day, just as Jesus burst forth with a shout, so will she. Tomorrow my friend will mourn. One day, he will laugh for joy. Easter isn't an escape from sorrow. It's a declaration that sorrow will not have the last word, that all believers in Christ, whose bodies are sown in the earth, will reap a harvest of imperishable life, that every tear will by wiped away, that on a day soon arriving all shall be well, all shall be well, and every manner of thing shall be well. Happy Easter.