By the time this post is published, Easter will be long gone... but I want to talk about it anyway. This was the first year that I hollowed and painted my own egg. It was the first year that Easter grass was no where to be seen or purchased. And this was my first Easter outside of the States (or outside of the Christian west, for that matter). In Japan, Easter slips by unannounced and un-celebrated. Even the secular symbols of the holiday were so subtle that they were obscured by daily life.
My church did celebrate the season.
In church there were gifts and psalms and supper and community and communion. In fact, my church celebrated it as well as any church I have been to back in the states, yet there seemed to be something missing.
When I was in college, my church held an Easter morning psalm sing in the church cemetery, a beautiful image of the mystery of Easter. After all, the bodies of the Christian dead - from months or centuries past - are just seeds dormant in the ground, waiting for the day when they will burst forth in a new and glorious form. But that isn't true in Japanese cemeteries. The bodies of non-Christians will not rise again; they will not follow our resurrected LORD into the new creation. The realization that Japanese cemeteries are not sown with hope of the resurrection but are truly filled with death was a sobering and wrenching and lonely feeling.
It makes me say, "Here I am, send me." but I don't know yet where or what or how.
God, what is your plan for me here?
Here is some hymn music in Japanese.
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