Managing the Weight

Turns out the third week of quarantine is when it starts to get real.

This week it seemed the word I saw everywhere was “lament.” There’s nothing wrong with lament, of course. The Bible has Psalms of lament. There is a book called Lamentations. God gave us the emotion. And yet, lament at this time of year is jarring. This is the week leading up to Easter. The weather outside is glorious. Greenery is lush, and colors are bursting from the ground.

But we are lamenting. Because we are losing much.

COVID is causing our church to miss Palm Sunday celebrations. No small children singing, no waving palm branches. There be no packed services for Easter this year. We will not be chanting, “He is risen, indeed!” in raucous unison as the throng gathers. I assumer there will be few, if any, egg hunts outside of immediate families. Our 21st anniversary is next Friday, and we will be celebrating it much the same way we do every evening these days—at home. Many of my friends are losing graduations, birthday parties, trips, reunions, and gatherings. My parents drive in for Easter every year and we celebrate with a Honeybaked Ham and JB’s homemade banana pudding.

Not this year.

This year I am counseling my pastor friends who are concerned they will close their doors for good, due to the lack of financial support as the economy trends downward. I am having more and more calls with friends who find the disease has crept into their neighborhood. I am talking to at least one who find the disease has bounded in like a storybook giant—leaving 250 dead in his immediate neighborhood. Another friend has a child with leukemia. I know a COVID death will eventually come to our congregation, and I do not know exactly how we will manage a funeral, or if there will even be one.

This year is different.

It’s heavy.

One of my friends told me that I need to recognize the season, that I needed to stop holding myself to excellence, that I needed to underperform.

God, why do I struggle doing that? I would say that it is theological reasons, but we also know that is not the truth. I am far too worried about what others think to underperform.

But when you carry all of these weights, it turns out that you will feel them. You will find them to be heavy, not just as metaphor, but as emotion.

It’s a heavy season.

This is when I am reminded that I need Easter. I do not need Easter as a gathering. I do not need Easter as a family meal. I do not even need the music or the preaching.

But I do need the Resurrected Jesus. I need a Jesus that can take my weight. And I need a Jesus that can conquer death, because God knows there is a refrigerated truck full of it on the streets of Queens right now, and it may be barreling towards Houston.

And I need the Resurrection. I need to rest in the knowledge that I am not saved by my productivity, my excellence, nor my pastoral performance. I am saved by grace—the grace given at the door of the Empty Tomb.

I need Easter, because I need to drop the weight I am carrying.

And, with God’s grace, that is what I plan to do.

Maybe you should, too.