Dear Friends,
I remember Easter as a child, at least my version of it. I remember when my mom would dress me in the pretty Easter dress with tights, dress shoes, hat, and even a purse (I’m not sure how many years I had this outfit, but it is burned in my memory). I also remember that as soon as Sunday school finished, the hat, purse, shoes, and tights would be in one place, and I would be without them on the church playground, shedding them along the path. Of course, they came back on for family pictures later, but for that moment after church, I was barefoot and free to be me.
On the very first Easter the scene was not too different. The death shrouds that were once on Jesus were folded neatly in the tomb, and Jesus was off to play in the freedom of Easter morning.
The last two years it felt as if we were still wearing some of the death shrouds on Easter morning. Yes, we were singing our favorite hymns, seeing lilies in the sanctuary, but all of it was from a distance and through a screen, limiting the joy we could experience. This year, we have the joy of removing the death clothes to dance in the freedom of Easter morning. We can gather together, sing together, rejoice together, hunt eggs together, and simply just be together.
Oftentimes, Easter uses the symbol of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly, comparing the chrysalis to the tomb. The caterpillar goes into the chrysalis in a limited world, dependent upon legs that grasp onto the physical world to get around. After dying to one skin in the chrysalis, the caterpillar grows wings and emerges without the limits it once had, it has been changed for the better.
How will we emerge from the limited, dark world that we have been living in? How have we grown wings of freedom and where are they taking us? How will we use what we have gone through the last 24 months to be living in a better world, as stronger disciples of Christ? It is not about what we looked like or did when we went in the tomb, it is who we are and what we do once we emerge. Happy Easter!
Blessings, Pastor Stacy