Easter is over?

Easter is over.

No, it isn’t. Keep reading.

Easter Sunday was March 23, 2008—as you probably know, one of the earliest Easters ever, and certainly the earliest one for many years to come. I heard at least one sports commentator complaining that Easter was conflicting with March Madness. He whined that Easter should be on one certain day every year. No one explained about how the date for Easter is set—at least not during that broadcast.

Easter Sunday was a glorious day for us at First Church. There was quiet joy at the Sunrise Service and the Contemplative Service. The Chapel was full at both the 9:00 and 11:00 services, and at the earlier service, we were delighted to have an Easter choir. The Sanctuary Services were just what they should have been on Easter—great hymn singing and great anthems, accompanied by a brass ensemble, a wonderful sermon, and Handel’s “Hallelujah” from “Messiah”, with members of the congregation invited to come sing with the choir.

Easter Sunday is past, but Easter continues. The Season of Easter continues for what is sometimes called The Great Fifty Days until Pentecost.Sunday on May 11. It is a season filled with the joy found in our assurance that Christ is risen. Tradition says that in the early church, monks and priests in monasteries made it a point to tell jokes and laugh all through the season, because God had outsmarted the forces of evil by raising Christ from the dead.

The Easter Sunday Sanctuary bulletins featured a quotation from Frederick Buechner, commenting on the mystery of the resurrection of Jesus: “It’s not his absence from an empty grave that convinces us. It’s his presence in our empty lives.”

Empty lives, you may think, doesn’t apply to people as busy and as purposeful as we First Methodists are. Our lives often seem over-full—places to go, people to see, tasks to accomplish. The point is to notice whether our lives are full of our responses to the call of God, or with substitutes to fill the emptiness.

The Easter Season is a perfect time to notice—in prayer, in meditation, in holy conferencing (intentional conversations with others)—the presence of Christ in our lives. It is a good time to notice how alive we are—not just in high, holy moments, not only in daunting challenges, but in the ordinary tasks and moments of every day.

Jesus said, “I have come that you might have life, and have it more abundantly.” Easter is a perfect time to choose and celebrate abundant life.