One of my best friends is Orthodox, and this past week was Bright Week. In the Orthodox church, the first week after Pascha is embraced as one full day, a celebration of the light of Christ that will never go out, and that is even now renewing all of creation. I’m not Orthodox, so it was the second week of Eastertide in my corner of Protestant Christianity: still bright, still celebratory, white cloth and bright Paschal candle at the center of our worship space, and “I Know That My Redeemer Lives” as our closing hymn.
Only not much felt very bright this Sunday in our church except for the tears that were shining in the eyes of some of my friends, and on the whole this Eastertide has felt decidedly non-triumphant so far. It’s been strange, and so far marked (mostly in small, private ways) by the consistent notes of ending, farewell, and loss. Friends and acquaintances have parents being treated for cancer. A dear friend is leaving her professional role at our church, and likely our day-to-day lives as well. Small work and organizational transitions feel surprisingly consequential — like the accumulation of small changes is actually changing the trajectory of a few communities of which I am a part. I picked up The Unwinding of the Miracle, by Julie Yip-Williams, which seemed like a good idea until I found myself crying in a coffee shop. And then on Saturday morning, we learned that Rachel Held Evans had died.
I didn’t know Rachel personally, though given her rare ability to write with piercing honesty, I felt like I did — like if we ever met in person, we’d be deep in conversation in minutes. In her generosity and kindness, she encouraged me (an unknown Internet Stranger) in my work writing children’s worship curriculum. And I do know, care for, and admire a few folks who were close to her, so when l learned of her death — sitting on a bench at the park, watching my 8-year-old son practice pitching to his dad — something inside of me twisted, hard. Everything about her death is just wrong, and there’s a tight spot in the left side of my chest that has been aching since Saturday morning for friends and fellow church members who met Jesus in Rachel and have felt a piece of the light of Christ go out.
On Sunday morning, we sang “O, death, where is your sting?” and I honestly almost couldn’t. I looked across the sanctuary at my friend who leads my daughter’s small group, and who just a few weeks ago participated in the Why Christian? conference, then brought Rachel home and installed her on the sofa with a weighted blanket and tea. Death’s sting was right there, in our midst, in her eyes. It was my morning to tell the story in children’s worship, and for once I was relieved to shuffle out with the elementary-aged kids. I had something to do. I could go tell the story of Jesus’ resurrection to children, including my friend’s son.
This week, our story was Jesus and Thomas. I’ll confess: it’s not usually my favorite story to tell. There’s not a lot of excitement — unless you count Jesus somehow appearing through the wall — and Thomas inevitably gets a bad rap for doing exactly what the rest of the disciples did (wanting to touch Jesus!), only a few days later. In the past, I’ve always leaned heavily into the bodily details of the story: Jesus isn’t a ghost! That’s the same body his friends saw up on the cross! Resurrection is a real thing, even if it’s hard to believe! Which, when telling the story to children who are still firmly in the concrete-operational stage, is a good strategy, I guess; the fact of resurrection is more available to them than the implications.
But this week, I didn’t have my old confidence in the story. It all feels strange and disorienting, which I imagine is how the disciples felt during their own first Eastertide: when Mary came and announced that the Lord was risen, I have a hunch that the other eleven didn’t answer “The Lord is risen, indeed!” It was probably something much more along the lines of, “What on earth is going on?” So that’s where I went with the children. In John 20, when Jesus appears to the disciples who have locked themselves away in a room in Jerusalem, he says the same phrase each time he appears: “Peace be with you.” He doesn’t explain; he doesn’t tell them what to expect when they meet their own deaths; he doesn’t give them a road map for going forward. Jesus simply appears, mysteriously, and says, “Peace.” Peace for doubts, peace for questions, peace for the uncertainty and strangeness and disorientation that a risen Lord necessarily brings.
It’s not nearly as triumphant as “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling over death by death!”: Jesus’ words in John 20 lack the horn solo and key changes I’ve come to expect in my Easter proclamations. But maybe we don’t get to the confident kerygma or acclamations of “Alleluia!” without first moving through the unease and uncertainty that accompany resurrection. If Jesus truly moved through death and into life, there’s a radical reorientation to all of reality as we experience it — and reorientation brings displacement, disruption, the necessary endings of some things. It may be an eschatologically completed work, but it certainly isn’t experientially completed here and now. The very first Easter Monday was really the first step, for most of the disciples, on the road to their own crosses, which is probably why Jesus knew they needed to first hear a word of peace that would somehow carry them through. He knew we would still need it, some two thousand years later, too.
I don’t how to experience reorientation without mourning, without uncertainty, without some fear and sadness. It’s odd to realize, some thirty-plus years into celebrating Easters, that I’m just now getting a taste of what the first one might have been like. So right now, I’m hanging on to Jesus’ word of peace; I’m hoping in his assurance that by his presence among his followers, Peace itself was spoken into their midst. Triumph, brightness, acclamation: it will come. But for now — hope, uncertainty, anticipation, within the safe arms of Jesus’ peace.