Easter Sunday, 2019

Here we are at Easter Sunday, a surprisingly chilly morning in South Florida, although it does remind me of the Easter Sundays of my youth, in Montgomery or Charlottesville or Knoxville.  Most years the winter hadn't been particularly harsh, but I was always ready for warmer weather.  Easter morning always had that chilly promise of an intense summer that was just around the corner.

We haven't done much in the way of tradition, although my sister and nephew have been here.  I'd have made a bunny cake.  But I know I'd have been the only one to eat it, so I decided not to do it.  We've been eating enough high calorie treats, without adding cake into the mix.

We haven't decorated eggs.  I don't usually do that, so that's not strange.

Some years I might have baked some sort of festive bread over the week-end, particularly hot cross buns.  I did heat up some cinnamon babka that I got from a grocery store, but it's not the same.

I am feeling like I should have thought ahead to have some sort of egg casserole ready to bake this morning, but again, I likely would have been the only one to eat it.  I will likely cook some sort of eggs to go with the bacon that my spouse is about to cook before he goes to church early for choir rehearsal.

We have not totally flunked Easter.  When I look back on this week-end, I want to remember the times of all of us gathered around a table, my Philosopher spouse, theologian me, sister who is the mother to my nephew.  I want to remember that we had conversations about the roots of the holidays of Easter which led to conversations about Passover, which led to conversations about the best ways of dealing with oppressive governments.

At first, I felt tense.  Do we really need to have these conversations (about oppressive governments, not about history) now?  But I saw that my nephew listened intently and intensely.  And I thought, if not now, when?

Unlike a lot of the world's twelve year olds, my nephew can linger in a safe space a bit longer.  He doesn't have government agents coming after him.  He may never need the lessons that we are teaching to save his own skin.

But the oppressed of the world rely on those of us who are safe to leave our safety to make the world better.  Good Friday tells us what might happen if we do.  Easter Sunday gives us the promise that our work will not be in vain.

Death does not have the final word.  Not during the times of the Roman empire, not during our own time of turbulence.  Alleluia!