It’s Easter!
March 27, 2005.
A lot of friends and colleagues, even strangers, have commented on how early this “High point on the Christian Calendar” has come this year. One friend, a colleague, even asked me if I knew who decided when Easter would be each year and how they made that decision.
While I could not remember ever asking that question or even hearing it addressed I offered what seemed, at the time, to be a reasonable answer. “It happened during Passover. And Passover’s date, for all time, was precisely defined the first night it was observed.” We talked a bit about the events of that first Easter Weekend and I suggested he do an Internet search of the “Jewish Calendar.”
Later that day I did that search and discovered, to my utter embarrassment, that I was mistaken. Even though the events we celebrate today unquestionably took place the day following Jesus’ observance of Passover, subsequent celebrations of his passion and resurrection seem to have been somewhat randomly scheduled. Passover this year is almost a month (April 23) later than Easter. Oh, there’s a plethora of chatter in the history of its dating, attempting to explain, even justify the reasons for this celebration being dislodged from its original place in time. Some even complain that our present schedule for the observances of Easter are just that; observances of Easter, a pagan holiday; accommodation to pagan rituals. In the end, it appeared my only vindication would be that I could tell my friend, “Well at least that’s when the first resurrection took place.”
Of course that didn’t satisfy me. I fumed inwardly about it for a day or two. But then I rediscovered a marvelous thing about our God. He specializes in bringing “beauty” out of “ashes.” He takes the chaos and confusion left in the wake of our clumsiness and makes out of it memorable, sometimes life-changing events and experiences. And so he did, for me at least, this Easter that has, apparently, come too early.
It all has to do with the moon.
One of the ways the ancients organized their calendars was to link dates to phases of the moon. Makes sense doesn’t it? The date on which Passover always falls is the “night of the first full moon of the first month of Spring (Jewish Month Nisan 14 – 15).” The “earliest Christians celebrated the ‘Lord’s Passover’ at the same time as the Jews celebrated theirs.” Nearly three Centuries later, a group of Church Leaders, known to historians as The Council of Nicaea, met. The actual year was 325 AD. They decreed that Easter should be observed on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox (March 21). Not much different from the Jewish “first full moon of the first month of Spring.” Their decision stuck. So, for many Christians, Easter can fall on any Sunday between March 22 and April 25. Out of the Centuries of controversy, still fomenting in some circles, one thing can be expected. There will be a Full Moon during our celebration of Jesus death and resurrection. And that, what might be called, “ho hum” thing, is the reason for my unusual experience this Easter.
First I need to set the backdrop. Holy Week 2002 followed my resignation from a four year assignment with a Church in Southern California. It was the first Easter in 32 years that I was not the pastor of a local Church and completely immersed in the busyness of this the “highest” of all Christian days. That year I established a new personal ritual. I would observe “Lent.” Kind of embarrassing to admit I hadn’t done so earlier. Bless him! Walter Wangerin made me do it. His 40 days of “Meditations on The Suffering, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus as recorded in Mark;” “Reliving the Passion,” inspired me to adopt this discipline. Of course, purist that I am, the discipline was completely focused on knowing Jesus more intimately and had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that I was unemployed, without income, and had no idea what I would do next.
Yah! Right!
Regardless of motive I have maintained this discipline for, now, three years. This year, despite the successful launching of “destiny:Life!” an independent ministry, I am still struggling with a sense of futility largely rooted in professional and financial uncertainty. I want to know what God’s specific purpose for me really is! I honestly believe the last three years have purified my heart ‘til I truly long to know our Lord more intimately. I am pursuing that intimacy passionately. I’m increasingly convinced that to know him is to know ourselves and his purpose for us. The discipline is becoming a more and more intense quest to know our Lord and understand life with Him. This Passion Week I’ve been awakened every night. The first night, as I walked through our dining room, the light shining through the window and on the wall was astonishingly bright. My first thought was that the neighbor’s floodlight had been turned on by a critter tripping the notion detector. Going to the window to check I discovered the light of a dramatically brilliant full moon filtering through the trees in our front yard, lighting our dining room, and the entire neighborhood ‘til it seemed like the gray blue glow of early sunrise had settled over the landscape. I stood in awe of it. There’s something about the light of the full moon. It’s a pure white light. Perhaps it seems more so because it shines out of the dark backdrop of night. Yet, even against the dull glow of light from a “city that never sleeps” its vivid clarity stirs wonder in me. I knelt and gazed. In meditation God opened some windows for me.
I really do want to know Him. As I knelt, transfixed by this wonder filled scene he’d created, I remembered. The moon, in itself, is a dull, lifeless mass of matter. Its light is a reflection of another’s light. We are “dust.” Like the moon, dull, lifeless, “without light in a dark world. In Jesus light, though, we become radiant. The reflection of the “light of the world.” This world can no more look upon the face of God than we can the sun. But, just like the reflection of the sun in the moon our light is “approachable.” They can see; even gaze on his reflection in us. They can be drawn by this “lesser light” to Him who is “the light of all life.”
Once my eyes adjusted to the unusual brilliance of the moon, that early morning, I noticed again the patterns, the shadows of its dull lifelessness on its face. The pristine orb is really only a dull lifeless thing. Its true essence showed through. Despite the brilliance of the sun it reflects, its darkness cannot be completely obscured. And so it is with us. The “dust” protrudes. The whole point of Christ’s passion is that we are a grotesquely marred race. His wounds are wounds inflicted on him by our flawed nature. His light reveals that. An honest, rigorous, passionate reliving of his suffering brings us face-to-face with our true selves. Our eyes focus. We are appalled at the scars. Pretenses are exposed. We are not the light; just dull, gray, lifeless masses of matter; matter that he chooses to make the surface on which to project the light of his life and love and demonstrate his power to remake us. What an amazingly wonderful love his is.
Then I realized the moonlight was dimming. The sun had begun another journey across that piece of sky visual to my eyes. My attention turned again to the Eastern sky and the regularly spectacular light show of colors and images that is the sunrise. Moonlight and its allure dissolved into a “greater light.” And I remembered that the moon, and my “dust self” have this in common. The light we reflect is the true light. The dull lifelessness; the “dust” does not diminish its brilliance. On the contrary, our darkness, by contrast, intensifies it. The moon has no brilliance in itself. In the shadow of its planet it cannot be seen. It will never be confused for the sun. I have no intrinsic brilliance, nothing to offer my world. But the love of him who is “the light of the world,” reflecting off the dusty surface of my life, reveals his intention and power to make, even out of something so humble, a reason to turn to his light. That reason is his love; love that gives me such dignity regardless of my sordid condition. Love that chooses me as a source of his light among those he wants to illuminate.
Here was the end of my search. I wanted so much to know God’s specific purpose for my life. And he was showing me. To reflect his glory. God has chosen me to be a reflection of his light to my world. But isn’t that everyone’s purpose? Yes. So, where are the specifics; the personal details of the rest of my life? Walter Wangerin helped me see those details. In words to Mary of Magdala, plunged in despair by the death of her Master, he says, “God … who made the world from nothing … can still astonish you. He can make of your … groanings a hymn.
… Prepare your spices. Return on Sunday, even to this scene of your sorrow, expecting nothing but a corpse, planning nothing but to sigh once more and to pay respects.
One story is done indeed, my Magdalene. You’re right. You’ve entered the dark night of the soul.
But another story … starts at sunrise. And the empty time between … is in fact preparing you! Soon you will change. Soon you will become that holy conundrum which must baffle and antagonize the world: a saint. Saint Mary Magdalene. “As dying, and behold we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.” – that host of contradictions, the beauty of Spirit, the puzzle of all who know him not, the character of the saints!
Come again on Sunday, Mary, and see how it is that God makes saints.
Come, follow.”
There it is! God’s specific will for my life is discovered in the faithful living of the life I’m now living. He calls me to “return on Sunday.” To “return … even to (the) scene of … sorrow … planning nothing but to sigh once more and pay respects.” To “come again on Sunday, … and see how it is that God makes saints.” To “come, follow.” Follow!
And so, today, I have heard, in the glow of Easter moonlight, Jesus call. “Follow!” “Let me, as I have done with my own life, make you extraordinary through the faithful living of ordinary, everyday life.”
“Rise! Shine! Your light has come,
and the glory of the LORD rises upon you.
See, darkness covers the earth
and thick darkness is over the peoples,
but the LORD rises upon you
and his glory appears over you.
Nations will come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your dawn.” (Isaiah 60:1ff)
