Easter Means I Don’t Have to Dress Up Anymore

I’m sitting here, on Easter morning, in ripped jeans, a t-shirt from high school, disheveled morning hair, and a cup of coffee (the cup was dirty… and it’s filled with coffee I reheated from yesterday).  There is not a pastel colored egg anywhere near me; I’m in a black jean jacket. And this moment feels the most Eastery. Because Easter means I don’t have to dress up anymore.

It’s funny, isn’t it?  We have phrases like “put on your Easter best” because typically Easter means we do have to iron and primp.  I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.  For goodness sake, it produces a lot of cute family photos!  Thanks to Easter, though, I now get dressed up because I want to… not because I feel like I have to.  Easter has freed me from hiding.

I used to think Easter was the final stamp that my sins were forgiven, and I could now choose to be with God.  He had taken all of his wrath that used to be aimed at me and other humans I loved and aimed it at his beloved son instead.  And now I can dress up and celebrate my freedom.

I won’t lie… I couldn’t get into it.  It always felt pretty sucky to think I was so bad that someone would have to kill an only child to be near me.  Deep inside, I knew this didn’t actually feel loving. It felt off. Because if you murder your kid on earth, even claiming you did it because you loved someone else so much doesn’t get you a free pass.  Lots of Christians even boast of being pro-life, protectors of children, yet we follow a God who murdered his kid? It just didn’t add up. But at least his kid came back to life three days later, so God could have his son back.  

I shoved it all down for so long that I stopped hearing.  I embraced this weird notion of “love,” and put on my Easter best.

But that meant I hid.  I hid my mistakes, my shortcomings, my morning breath, my disgusting habits, my addictions, my fears… myself.  A God willing to send me to eternal suffering for not saying a prayer could surely change his mind. If he murdered his kid, it was not out of the line of reason that his wrath could return and get aimed at me.  And this fear spilled over into his followers, who were also toting “loving” methods for keeping everyone in line.

But now I see it differently…

Now I see that when the Bible says “nothing” can separate me from God’s love, it means it.  It meant it from Genesis to Revelation; this isn’t just a post-resurrection notion. My sins are and have always been forgiven.  The resurrection is the evidence that I can now wave in the air and say, “See! Even murdering God doesn’t separate us! We killed him!  He came back to life! And let us put our fingers in the wounds and cooked us fish on a beach! GUYS! WE ARE LOVED!”

And when you’re loved like that… you don’t have to hide anymore.  You don’t have to dress up any of the weird and beautiful, hurtful and messy aspects of being human.  My morning hair is real. My addictions are real. My mental illness is real. My past traumas are real.  My cooking talents are real. My singing voice is real… and so are my farts.

And I am loved.

Thanks to Easter, I don’t have to dress up anymore.