"How do you celebrate Easter?” asked my Greek Professor at the end of class Friday. She is a native Greek speaker and the prototype of a charming Giagia. As the only student in her Modern Greek 656 class, sometimes I feel more like family than a student with the way we joke and laugh all the while.
What was inherent in the “you” was “mormons”. I have often, to my delight, fielded tough questions about Mormonism being the first member of the “very financially savvy” church she has befriended. Having served a full-time mission in Greece, I relish the opportunities to focus on the eccentricities of Mormonism’s view on Christ’s teachings.
When one is actively learning multiple languages she often finds herself waiting for the right word/language combination to surface in her thoughts before opening her mouth. In like manner, I paused, then hesitated. Behind my answer flowed the context of why she would ask this in the first place: In the Greek Orthodox tradition the week of Easter is the Super Bowl of high and holy holidays. You don’t miss it! Many of the days are marked with stunning psalms and lustrous liturgies. These culminate Saturday night. When the clock strikes midnight all the lights of the church go out and out of the Holy of Holies a lighted candle emerges. Every participant in the cathedral has a candle and the flame is disseminated down through the congregation. In a moment all the cathedral is lit from the one candle, the source of all light. The symbol is stunning to think upon.
So how was I to answer the curiosity of my professor? “It’s personal,” I responded. But the words felt chunky falling off my tongue. Wanting to add to this meager response, I started again.. and failed to breathe out anything. “It’s personal,” she responded with a merciful smile which meant that my answer was sufficient. What she thought was something lost in translation was something that I simply couldn’t formulate. What is different about our Easter that brings out the masses? What beautiful symbols could she appreciate? Where’s the “magic”!? Nothing!? While sitting in the pews I’m not going to be hearing the hymns of Mary’s laments, but the lament of the child who spilled his Cheerios. Church proceeds as normal. Which reminds me, I need to prepare my lesson for Sunday school!
Mormons don’t see eye to eye with Historic Christianity on the holidays, rituals, and feasts. We kind of lump those things into the miscellaneous category of good intentions gone wrong. Our method of worship is simple and unbounded. It’s kind of the Build-a-bear of religions. A lot is left between you, God, and your conscience to work through, like Jacob wrestling the angel for his blessing. Epic.
What draws us to church on Easter Sunday is not what happens on that day in church, but what has happened previously in our lives. I felt unsatisfied with my answer because I didn’t do it justice. I told her that everyone worships in his and her own way. They have candles at church, we have prayers at home; They have crucifixes hung, and we present our bodies as a living sacrifice; They hear beautiful liturgies, and in silence are the greatest sermons taught to us.
The thing that draws me to church on Easter Sunday is the same thing that brings me every week. I love the Lord. He is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.
He counsels me often to consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
He is the tree whose fruit is most sweet. It is the love of God, the most desirable of all things, and the most joyous to the soul; whose word is iron leading to the fountain of living waters.
Though I should serve him with my whole soul, yet would I be an unprofitable servant.
This Sunday, this is the testimony, last of all, which I want to give of him: that He lives!
I don’t want the pomp. This Easter is a product of how I have chosen to live my life. Ritual and tradition do not inform my worship, only devotion and longing to be more. I will try to approach God in thanksgiving for the awesomely terrifying gift of His Son.
So, It’s personal.
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