Easter Monday: A note not from the Desert Fathers

by the Rev. Buddy Stallings
Since I am very part-time, non-stipendiary, and somewhat curmudgeonly, I am choosing not to write this morning about a piece of wisdom from the Desert Fathers. Today is Easter Monday, the second day of the Great Fifty Days of Easter; and not a single one of the “top ten hits of the Desert Fathers” seems very Eastery to me. This is the time when Episcopalians delight in saying “Happy Easter” much longer than our non-liturgical brothers and sisters do so. To be clear, God loves “them” just as God loves us, though I suspect God wonders why in the world “they” would choose to celebrate Easter just for one day when Easter is, in fact, a glorious season, lingering all the way to Pentecost.
Lord knows we are in particular need of a “Glorious Season” this year! My wondrous, brave, and talented colleagues at Calvary gave all of us with eyes to see, ears to hear, and fingers to click thoughtful and beautiful online services during Holy Week (indeed throughout this dreadful episode of sheltering in place). When the first cords of “Jesus Christ Is Risen Today” struck strongly and joyfully yesterday in Calvary Church, void of most of us but filled to the brim with love and spirit, my heart soared and my tear ducts leaked. Even with spotty Internet connection, as the service concluded with Widor’s Toccata, played as magnificently as I have ever heard it done, for a few moments I was transported to a place where the words of little Pippa, of Browning’s famous poem, rang out loud and clear, less naïve than descriptive, “God is in His heaven, and all is right with the world.”
But as charming and flamboyantly hopeful as it is, I know better than Pippa’s claim. All is not right with the world just now or at any time; and while God is clearly in God’s heaven, much more importantly to me, God is right here, right now in the midst of this moment, magically delivering neither us nor God’s self from the reality of the pandemic and its constituent disaster. The message of our liturgy last week is less about reenactment than commission: “love like this, live in this way, die to the old to be raised to the new.” The virtuosity of Widor’s marvelous strain is less about being gobsmacked by its beauty than being urgently renewed to run full speed into a world desperately in need of God come near. The joy of Easter week is less about luxuriating in the light among ourselves than about bounding in joy to be the light of Christ in the world.
Never mind that Walgreens slashed the price of chocolate bunnies this morning by half or that the few daring ladies, who wore Easter bonnets to their Zoom family party yesterday, have packed them away for another year. It is still Easter, beloved friends, and it shall be for a while. My beloved mentor in college, who died just this week, Dr. Bradley Pope, once told me that Easter is the “birthday of hope.” With all my heart, despite its scars and hardened places, I believe it; and Easter as the birthday of hope lasts forever!