The sign seemed pretty mundane. But they have no idea how their advertising defangs the power Easter can have for Christian communities.
There’s a certain Methodist church I pass daily. They have an electronic sign which can display upcoming events and fancy graphics. It’s the kind of thing which inspires in me both jealousy and disgust.
For the most part, I don’t even notice it. Like most Christian attempts to fit into our culture, it never rises to the level of distraction.
But this time I saw it.
Passing it on a Friday morning before Holy Week, I did a double-take. It declared in big letters:
He is risen!
Then the sign changed to announce the Easter service times.
Before Palm Sunday. They’re declaring the tomb is empty.
Before he even gets to Jerusalem. He had yet to eat the last supper, wash the feet of his disciples, or, you know, go through that whole Passion thing.
Long before any of the events which make those three words mean anything, this church sign is declaring the resurrection.
Of course, I had those liturgical purity thoughts at the time about the inappropriateness of such a declaration.
And then I had the “practical” purity thoughts which snidely question how else are we supposed to get people to come to our Easter services?
Not far behind come the rehearsed theological convictions of needing to maintain the season we’re in. Much like the persistent culture war on Advent by people wanting to celebrate Christmas for the month of December rather than the actual season of Christmas which begins with Christmas. Now they’re turning Lent into Easter!
But let us not forget why we don’t say Alleluia during Lent. Nor where the power of declaring “He is risen!” on Easter comes from. The season of Lent is actually good for us.
This church’s sign, while not a sin or some deep heresy or even an object of ridicule, does represent an honest mistake. A mistake of prioritizing Easter attendance over the humble adherence to simple discipline.
Certainly the story could end there. And if I had written this then, it certainly would have. But there’s one more thing to note.
They changed the sign on Easter Monday.
Much like tossing the Christmas tree to the curb on December 26th during the actual season of Christmas, they stopped declaring “He is risen!” during the first week of Easter.
Apparently, now it’s time to advertise Vacation Bible School.
For less liturgical friends, the seasons are a foreign concept. Or perhaps they are “too Catholic” or are “unbiblical”.
But they serve a real purpose Americans in particular need in the 21st Century.
- We need to wait.
- We need introspection and discernment.
- And perhaps more than anything else, we need to stop turning celebrations into metrics, communities of faith into competitors in a magic marketplace of attention, and our holy days into commodities.
We spend far more time trying to sell our best selves and avoid bothering big donors than we do wrestling with what we’re actually doing to ourselves.
But most of all, it means we come to Easter entirely unprepared.
Welcome
On Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, we declare the historic purpose of Lent. And I’ll tell you, I never hear anyone talk about it. Ever. Except occasionally on Ash Wednesday. But even then, only by a few.
The purpose of Lent for the earliest Christians was to be a time of discernment. Discernment for three particular groups:
- Newcomers to the faith. They were learning what it means to follow Christ and preparing to join in a community.
- Notorious sinners. They were actively seeking repentance and reconciliation with the community from which they were estranged.
- Everyone else in the church. They were preparing to welcome new people and repentant sinners into the full, included stature of the whole Christian community.
And all of this preparation would happen during the 40 days before Easter. Those 40 days. That’s all the time we get to prepare. So that when we all show up on that late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, we would all together become a new creation.
Strangers, thieves, slanderers, immigrants, adulterers, mothers, sons, daughters, dads, coaches, lawyers, doctors, disabled, transgendered, jobless, Christians all. Mixing together as full members of the faithful. Repentant; restored: whole.
This is why we wait to declare that Christ is risen. It isn’t just three words. They aren’t an ad to remind C & E (Christmas and Easter) Christians to show up again. And they aren’t the feel-good-and-make-everybody-happy-while-offending-no-one words we say because it’s Easter.
We say it because this is the day we celebrate our new lives. Our Resurrection.
Using those words to capture eyeballs rather than compelling the faithful to rise with him is a mistake. A mistake I encourage us not to make throughout the whole Easter season.
He is risen! Now! Still! And my mind is again on acceptance and forgiveness.