Celebrating Easter During a Pandemic

“Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, hallelujah!” For weeks during the season of Lent we have been preparing to say those words. Finally, the wait is over and the sadness of the cross has given way to the joyous hallelujahs of the empty tomb. Easter is the season when the church around the world joins together to celebrate Christ’s resurrection. But can we celebrate Easter in the midst of a pandemic? 

Lent as a season of lament and grief seemed to match the unwelcome change in the world around us. But what now? Lent is over — but this pandemic isn’t. The fasting of Lent is supposed to lead into the feasting of Easter.  Yet we are still isolated from loved ones. The whole world is still hurting in countless ways.  In light of this, maybe you are wondering, like me, whether celebrating Easter this year is not some form of willed blindness or denial. 

To wonder these things shows that we’re taking the world seriously. But if we pay close attention to the world around us, there is never an opportune time to celebrate. There is always something to mourn and grieve. And yet the Christian church celebrates Easter because we bear witness to the fact that into a world of pain and sorrow a new reality has appeared: the joyful reality of resurrection. 

When Jesus rose from the dead, the world wasn’t ready for it then either. On the first Easter day there was also plenty of tears, confusion, disbelief, and fear. But Jesus patiently spent forty days with his disciples, teaching, showing his hands and side, opening their hearts to this new reality. And slowly uncertainly gave way to praise. Fear was replaced by exuberance!  

My hope for us this Easter season is very simple: that just like the disciples, we would allow Jesus to minister to us and guide us into the great reality of the resurrection life given to the world in Him. We are an Easter people and now we get to contemplate what is really the very heart of the Christian faith, which is the resurrection of Jesus.