Easter--An open door

"When the world

shakes its fist and says,

  Good Friday!

  Good Friday!

God comes back

with dogwood,

redbuds, and jonquils;

the crocuses

and butterflies of life

and says,

  Easter!

  Easter!

  Easter!"                        

       --Grady Nutt

Every Easter I remember a scene from the Passion Play in Oberammergau in Germany. The play opened with Jesus riding into Jerusalem for the last time. The play ended with the Resurrection. And in-between the drama of the last days of Jesus’ life took six hours to tell.

I was not prepared for the Resurrection scene. The crucifixion had been particularly graphic. The stage went dark after Jesus was lovingly taken down from the cross by his loved ones. In the last scene of the drama the weeping women move through the darkness and stood behind these huge doors that represented the locked tomb. They knocked on the door and nothing happened. Then an angel came and without saying a word she unrolled an aisle cloth from the door down, down the steps toward the audience. As the women looked on the door slowly began to open. Light, dazzling light slowly filled the stage and bathed the darkened room where we sat with light. After a long pause through that open door and the streaming light Jesus came. He walked down the steps and from stage left and right a hundred children come running forward and grab his legs as the chorus sang joyously.

That’s Easter for me.  Somehow my old nine-to-five appointment book is disturbed once more. The predictability of my days is thrown off kilter. The thus-and-so-ness of my life--worries about money or health or children or just the weary world—is suspended for just a moment.

This Easter a twelve-year old memory comes surging back. A large door, a blinding light and a figure people thought was dead now alive--and the laughter, the giddy laughter of little children. This is what keeps me going.