Second Sunday of Easter, April 27, 2025
Sunday of Divine Mercy
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Merry Easter?
Tongue firmly in cheek, Frederica Mathewes-Green (the Orthodox Garrison Keillor) writes about Easter:
It’s that time of year, again, when school children are coloring pictures of Jesus hanging from a cross, and shop owners fill their windows with gaily colored cutouts of the Flogging at the Pillar. In the malls everyone’s humming along with seasonal hits on the sound system, like “O Sacred Head, Sore Wounded” (did you hear the Chipmunk’s version?). Car dealers are promoting Great Big Empty-Tomb Size discounts on Toyotas.
Yes, it’s beginning to look a lot like Easter. Who hasn’t been invited to an “In His Steps” party, where players move plastic pieces around a board emblazoned with a ma of Jesus’ last suffering day in Jerusalem?
Not me, for one. No one plans to have a holly jolly Easter. It’s commonplace to say that “Christmas is for children,” but what about Easter? Is it for children, too?
Margaret and I made Easter bags for Miles and Jasper. We filled them with stickers, coloring books of Bible stories, and cards with a bit of cash. Andi and Margaret helped them color some eggs, which turned out beautiful. Our Easter dinner at the Tomita grandparents’ house included good food, some music and a few more gifts.
But nothing like Christmas. Neither of the boys seemed very excited about all the toys under the Easter bunny. The Easter egg hunt at church caught their attention on Palm Sunday, and Andi even found some eggs for Finn, waiting “quietly” in Aki’s arms. But the mystery of Jesus’ passion week, crucifixion and resurrection seems hard for kids to get into.
And why should they? Mostly they have not yet lived through the agonies or ecstasies that Jesus experienced, and their parents have experienced too. Frederica continues:
I remember my toybox, but not much of what was in it, and I don’t retain any of those thrilling Christmas toys today. When I grew up, I put away childish things … I saw suffering and death. I saw people live through situations so crushingly unfair that it was impossible that the universe bore no witness. I saw people find within themselves nobility to overcome, as well.
These are not things children have to think about. They don’t yet have to know life’s weariness, pain, profound loneliness and the hovering fear of meaninglessness.
Just as she turned 40, Ms. Mathewes-Green moved out of her Episcopalian roots into the Orthodox Church. Now Easter is called Pascha.
On Pascha we will sing, over and over, dozens of times, “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life.” Over and over and over. It is not a children’s song.
On the way home from school, we have been listening to a dramatized “Peter Pan.” It is marvelous; the characters come completely alive and all of us couldn’t wait to hear some more. But now it’s over, and we are settling into stories by Roald Dahl, to be followed I think by the Chronicles of Narnia.
Although the Lost Boys all grow up, Peter Pan never does, living his life moment after moment in Never-Never Land for years and years. But he doesn’t remember his promises, because the present moment captivates him time after time. “And thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.”
In our darkening grandparent days we are moving through story after story with our grandkids, always looking toward the greatest story ever told, that story of Christ trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life.
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.
(Acts 5, Psalm 118, Revelation 1, John 20)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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