EASTERTIDE: DARE TO DANCE AGAIN

So once upon a time, the Church didn’t celebrate Easter Sunday.  In fact, the thought of an “Easter Sunday” would have been completely alien to early Christians.  If you were to go back in time and ask them (having first learned to speak Koine Greek, of course), “So what do you do for Easter Sunday?” they probably would have responded, “Don’t you just mean ‘Sunday’?”

You see, to the early Church, every Sunday was a celebration of Easter.  Every. Sunday. Always.  And why not?  The first apostles had witnessed the miracle of miracles: God exposing the falsity of Empire’s reign of oppression and violence, of sin and death, by showing the world how, in the end, the cross failed to do its job, for Christ is risen!  And every single Sunday, Christians would gather to sing their hallelujahs in the victory song of love and life, to take bread and cup, to affirm the promises of the God of Covenant, and to prepare for the day when all things would be made new.  Every. Sunday. Always.

Still today, even during the seasons of Lent or Creationtide, or even throughout the time from Advent to Epiphany, every Sunday is a celebration in ways great or small of the Easter promise of God’s kingdom come.  And even though “Easter Sunday” comes and goes every year, the Church in its ancient wisdom wanted to make certain that we Christians would never forget we were Easter people or limit such an identity to just one Sunday out of the whole year.

To this end, the Church established a special 50-day season (eight Sundays, if you’re keeping score) within the liturgical year – from the Day of Resurrection to the Day of Pentecost – to help us especially remember at the Table our Risen Lord, tell again the stories of resurrection, and joyously dare to dance into God’s future: the Season of Easter (or “Eastertide” as it is often called).  Thus, every year during Eastertide, the Church dives deeper into the Paschal Mystery with special intensity, embracing this holy time as a chance to relearn the dance steps of Resurrection so we can rediscover joy and life and purpose as Easter people following a Risen Savior.

We at Union Avenue began to practice those dance steps on the First Sunday of Easter, learning from the Gospel According to Mark that it’s up to us to see that the world hears the good news of Easter and all that it implies for the world turning right-side up.  And starting on April 18, the Third Sunday of Easter (having given our online worship production crew a well deserved Second Sunday off), we’ll explore a six-week Eastertide series called “Dare to Dance Again” from our friends at the Worship Design Studio, who write:

“As Easter people, we are called to dance our dances of freedom for all the world to see – even and perhaps especially in times of great difficulty.  Dances of hope.  Dances of justice.  Dances of love.  During this season, post-resurrection stories point to the joy of living in the beloved community and extending that fellowship through our witness as we dare to dance again!“

And so, as we prepare to engage in the EPIPHANY program and craft some tools for the shaping of our ministry as Easter people for years to come, and as the world still reels from COVID-19 and the stage of 21st-century ministry continues to reveal itself to be a shifting landscape, we are going to summon the courage of our faith forebearers who learned how to do the Easter dance on a very uneven dance floor and daringly helped the Church grow and expand across the world, trusting that God will order the steps of the faithful now just as then and make a way for us to follow the Way that leads to life.  So put on your spiritual dance shoes and get ready, because “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning!” (Ps. 30:5b)  It’s time for Union Avenue to dare to dance again! Soli Deo Gloria, Rev. Michael