"This is the night"

The devotion I read a couple days ago -- on Good Friday, I think -- described Jesus' death on the cross as a negation of what God is. A negation of life and creativity. And then invited readers to ponder this emptiness, this contradiction. What does this mean? as we like to say at The Perverse Lutheran.

We Christians move on from that negation on Easter morning, as we hear the news that "Christ is risen!" proclaimed everywhere -- this year on Facebook, on YouTube, in text messages we send one another. We follow Jesus through death and into new life, to the portals of heaven, to the "bliss untold" of the final stanza of the hymn "Awake, My Heart, With Gladness."

But today, April 12, 2020, is different, an Easter Sunday when we,  because of the COVID-19 pandemic, have chosen not to gather in churches. Public worship is online, but we are alone in our homes, perhaps with a few loved ones. There might be live chat along side a live stream video, maybe messages from friends on the phone, but still, it's a quiet Easter.

I went outside to drink my coffee this morning and listened to the birds before it was time to go to YouTube for my church's worship service. It is quiet out here, more so than usual, and the birdsong has geographical depth. I hear the sparrows close by, the cardinal in the maple in front of my house, other birds farther away down the block. A mighty robin made a ruckus in the garden, yanking a worm from the dirt. Two geese flew overhead and let me know they were there with their honking.

Across the street a different sort of sighting -- the Easter Bunny, in a blue hoodie, came out the front door, opened the garage, and carried bags of Easter swag back to the house.

I am enjoying the absence of frantic Easter activity. Any other year I'd be crazy busy this morning, singing, supervising, chatting, worrying about dinner. Instead I'm sitting in the back yard watching the forsythia, too yellow almost to be believed, bounce in the breeze. I'm admiring the early tulips, blooming red and cheerfully out of last fall's fallen leaves.

"This is the day the Lord has made," we sing in a Psalm antiphon on Easter Sunday. The words and tune were the first Easter thing that came into my mind as I woke this morning. And they are true, always. God is good. God's days are good.

But the first words of Easter Day are the words, "This is the night." They were chanted in the Easter Vigil service at the beginning of the Easter celebration fifteen hours ago. "And there was evening and there was morning, the first day," says Genesis. The dark vigil, then the sunrise.

"This is the night, in which, breaking the chains of death, Christ arises from hell in triumph."

In the night of death, of negation, the night of absence from one another, of sorrow for many, Christ arises from hell in triumph. And while it's good to make joyful noise about it, full on with choirs, organ, brass, it's not about our noise and celebrations and churches. Easter is this great mystery, where Christ walks among us, bringing life and hope and transforming our grief, our death into God's eternal life.