Easter morning shouts, “Celebrate!” We greet one another with jubilant phrases:
“Alleluia! Christ is risen!”
“The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!”
After forty days of Lent, full of fasting and the ups and downs of Holy Week, we are more than ready to celebrate. This is, after all, the high point of the Church Year. Indeed, Easter is the high point of our very lives, for during that marvelous Resurrection Day centuries ago, Jesus rescued us from darkness and death and gave us the keys to the Kingdom, our true home. Behold joy!
You’d think with all that wonder and joy filling the atmosphere, we’d be celebrating for days on end. Strangely, though, almost before the party’s begun, it’s done.
Yet, according to the liturgical calendar the season of Eastertide last seven weeks, stretching from Easter to Pentecost. Jesus is alive. He is risen. He overcame death. He gave us everlasting life. Such good news. So much to celebrate!
Where’s the party? Where’s the feast? Where’s the celebration?
Eastering Celebration
Now we’ve hit a wall, for we are not well-versed in celebration. I see it in myself. I see it in my spiritual direction practice as well as in my book coaching work. When I ask folks what they will do to celebrate the good they’ve experienced, the milestone worth celebrating, most shrug their shoulders. They mumble, “I don’t know.” Celebration doesn’t take up much space in our busy burdened lives.
Ask a child if they want to celebrate. You’ll have a mudpie cupcake decorated with flowers, leaves, sticks, and any available trinkets before you can turn around in a circle three times.
Maybe that’s why I love I Am Invited to a Party! Are you familiar with Mo Willems’ delightful characters Elephant and Piggie? In this book, they explore the realm of celebration. Piggie receives an invitation to a party. Her uncertainty acts as a springboard for her to consult Gerald, her best friend. She wants to be ready, ready, ready for the party that’s ahead. Yet she’s never been to a party. He knows all about parties! Gerald leads Piggie in preparation. The iterations of how to be ready bring laughter. We read along, eager to see how prepared they are for whatever is in store.
Eastertide’s fifty days give us the same sort of space. They invite us to celebrate. We need to grow in this for it prepares us for the Supper of the Lamb. One day there shall be the most glorious of feasts, of celebrations when all is made new in the new heavens and new earth. Can you imagine the winsome, wild wonder of that day? It also gives us ways to make those who don’t know Jesus curious about Him.
What would happen if we savored the slow and lingered longer in the goodness of Easter? Why speed along when we can take fifty days —fifty days!— to rejoice. Post-resurrection appearances give us time to ponder the wonder of the empty tomb and look at the promises of the future because of the resurrection. The good news heralded back at the birth of Christ continues at Easter. We need time to step into the magnitude of what’s just happened. Let’s allow spaciousness to behold and express joy!
How to Behold and Celebrate Joy
For days after Easter this year, I kept returning to the scene where the women had gathered their spices and journeyed together, expecting to find Jesus’ body in the tomb. When they didn’t find Him there, a plethora of emotions and actions happened. I lingered, still linger, there. I kept thinking, who are the women that would have been elbow-to-elbow with me as we found the stone rolled away? What would our thoughts and expressions have been? How would that moment have changed every other moment, every other conversation from that moment forward? How would we behold joy?
What the women and the disciples didn’t first grasp about how Jesus would rise to life unfolds over days and weeks among all sorts of folks. Jesus talks to women in the garden and men along the Emmaus Road. In Galilee, He meets up with the apostles at their agreed-upon spot. He takes time with individuals. Thomas gets to touch Jesus’ side that was wounded. Peter finds forgiveness at a breakfast grilled over a fire on the shore. Over 500 encounter Jesus. What expressions captured their wonder? What words leapt from lips? What words and expressions leap from ours?
Augustine of Hippo said, “The Christian should be an alleluia from head to foot.” What does an alleluia in bodily form look like? Hands reach up to praise and out to bless. Feet frolic down the street. Merry making moves the people of God to rejoice. Miriam dances. David’s fancy footwork looks wild.
“In God’s presence, I’ll dance all I want!…Oh yes, I’ll dance to God’s glory—more recklessly even than this. And as far as I’m concerned . . . I’ll gladly look like a fool . . .” (2 Samuel 6:22, The Message)
With this “fearfully and wonderfully made” body (Psalm 139:14), we engage all our senses as we join the throng of those who adore God. Celebration includes rejoicing, gaiety, exhilaration, and festivities galore. It is joy embodied in smiles and song, in sweet remembrances and happy gestures. It’s delight alive. It’s gladness of heart as we take God so seriously with our joy while taking ourselves less seriously. Behold, joy!!!
“But we who would be born again indeed must wake our souls unnumbered times a day,” George MacDonald said. The soul alive finds a catalyst in celebration, which keeps us nimble of heart and mind, preventing us from growing dull and brittle. Celebrating resurrection means we pay attention to what’s in front us of right here and now. We also look back, recalling the first Easter and look forward to the grand Feast where we celebrate all the newness of life in its grandeur of the new heavens and new earth. Our pattern of resurrection is to notice:
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- What’s alive?
- What’s died?
- What will help us live fully alive?
Invited to a party, Gerald and Piggie spend hours going back and forth experimenting with what they should wear as they get ready. A multitude of options come into play. They add to their excitement in a variety of ways. Joy alive!
Continuing the Celebration
Over the seven weeks between Easter and Pentecost, what options might help us celebrate each and every day? What if we enter the slow of a longer celebration? What if we take time to soak in Scripture? Explore music, art, and literature that revisits those days? What would it be like to investigate the wonder of the empty tomb via nature, creativity, feasting, and beauty?
When Gerald and Piggie finally arrive at the long-awaited party, they discover others who are also decked out to the nines in wonderfully wild ways. It’s outrageously fun to see how hardily they celebrate. I’m inspired by their curiosity and enthusiasm. What if our Easter celebration—the Great Fifty Days—entered such a deep wildness? Watching Gerald and Piggie, I’m reminded me of N.T. Wright’s sermon:
“So why, when we get to Easter Day, do we not celebrate wildly, lavishly, gloriously, at great length, and with studied disregard for normal propriety? …
We should be doing things which would make our sober and serious neighbors say, ‘What is the meaning of this outrageous party?’”
I want my days, my life to be like that, so full of exuberant joy that people think I’m outrageous. Want to join me in beholding and displaying such joy? Let’s keep Eastering on for we are jubilant Resurrection People.
“Alleluia! Christ is risen!”
“The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!”
