Easter Morning Began with an Upside-Down Exclamation Mark
Reflections on an Easter like no other
I’m not the kind of person who sees symbols in everything, but it was impossible to miss that this morning’s sun on Lake Michigan was a big, red, upside-down exclamation mark. Someone else pointed out that it looked like the “i” on the logo The Incredibles wear. However you looked at it — starting out as a red ball, then turning exclamatory, then becoming so bright you couldn’t look at all— it was worthy of beholding.
For decades, my church has held a simple sunrise service on Easter Sunday. It starts at 5:45 in the morning with a few quiet songs, peppered in between with passages telling the story of Jesus coming back to life. He’d been dead for three days, his people were in mourning, and this day, we celebrate that when a few women woke early in the mourning to cover his stiffened body with perfume, they found his tomb empty. Somehow, at some point in the dead of night, he’d broken free.
The singing gradually become more exultant as the story proceeds. When the service ends — all songs on the song sheet offered up, the Jesus story at its mysterious, magical end — the sun breaks out from the horizon. The beach is bathed in light, the gulls and geese swoop and dive, and the children throw rocks in the water.
