April:

Joy is ... Easter!

Here’s what I know about April: Easter and Spring Break.

Spring break didn’t become relevant for me until I became a mother. Growing up, I

didn’t travel anywhere during that time of the year because Easter usually fell on

either the first or second weekend of the break. In fact, I cannot remember a single

spring break in all of my growing up years. I probably spent them in much the same

way I spent my summers, hanging out at my father’s church office, sleeping in,

reading, or in later years, working at the mall. But ever since I became a mom and

had kids in school – even preschool – we’ve been taking advantage of spring break

to make some family magic happen. Like many others who live in Northern

California, we chose Hawaii as our springtime destination. So with a toddler and

baby in tow, my little family of four started what has become a beloved tradition,

vacationing in Hawaii over spring break.

There is only one upside to having a husband who travels all of the time for work:

loyalty programs. I like to give credit where credit is due, so let me stop and say this

one great thing about my husband. He makes sure that every night spent in a hotel

room, every moment spent driving a rental car, and every dollar spent on an airline

ticket will somehow come back to benefit his family. He keeps track of all of his

expenses, doing his best to charge on a specific credit card that has the best

products to buy with points (he bought us a laptop and a new set of dishes last year

– go figure!) He makes sure to pick one hotel brand and sticks with it even if it’s not

the most convenient one for his trip. And it pays off…..
Most of the Hawaii trips we’ve taken have been for free using accrued points from

business travel. Most of the Hawaiian nights have been in large beautiful suites, and

most of the flights have been in first class. Now, you know a man’s got to spend a lot

of time away from the family to rack up enough points to pull that off. One time he

had to leave a Hawaiian vacation early due to work and when the kids and I flew

home in first class without him we sat next to the lovely Renee Zellweger who took

quite a liking to my tow-headed boy.

What I love about the spring break holiday is that it comes just when kids can use a

solid chunk of time away from their teachers and their friends. Just as the school

year is starting to feel claustrophobic and never-ending and their peers seem more

like annoying siblings than friends, off we go away from it all with nothing but time

to give unconditional love and attention to them. (Plus, when they were smaller,

there was always the keiki club, which gave the grown ups some much needed time

away from the kids too.) When the kids were younger they usually met other kids in

the pool and had fun playing water basketball, going down the slides with new

friends, and eating chicken fingers together poolside. Sometimes we’d stretch out

the day until they fell asleep at the pool and we’d carry them up to bed. There is

nothing quite as sweet as changing a sleeping child from sandy trunks into clean

pajamas and watching a ton of warm sand roll onto the carpet. Now that they are 10

and 12 we are lucky that they are still more interested in hanging out with us, and

reading under an umbrella than in running off on their own. We split the day

between reading with Mommy, (that’s a rule, Mommy always reads for most of the
day) and building sand castles with their Dad. My husband prefers them to watch

him build a castle than actually participate in the building of it. Recently, he has let

them make surrounding fortifications, but I have never seen a child – our own, or

one of their friends – allowed to sculpt with him. The Hawaii days run into each

other filled with relaxing, reading, and eating with an occasional shaved ice thrown

in.

Yes, spring break has been kind to us….

But the other thing that usually occurs in April is Easter. As you may have guessed, I

have been celebrating Easter for as long as I can remember. I have a jumble of

memories of Easter from my growing up years. From early on, as the daughter of a

minister, I have really clear impressions of Easter marking my father’s

“professional” success. Easter brings out a crowd of people that visit church only

once or twice a year. The C&EC (Christmas and Easter Crowd). Even folks mad at

God or the preacher could still find their way to a church pew on Easter. People who

were new in town and had not found a church home yet, might visit our church on

Easter Sunday. People who only vaguely wanted to attend church at all and let

weeks go by without getting up early might make a special effort on Easter morning.

So for all those reasons, the regular church congregation had to make extra efforts

to ensure that ours was the church that all of those people found on Easter morning.

On Saturdays leading up to the BIG weekend we would gather in parking lots of strip

malls and put flyers under windshield wipers announcing the upcoming Easter
service with exciting Sunday school programs for children. We would all invite our

friends from school and our neighborhoods – we even had special flyers made up for

the more personal invitations. Basically, anybody who knew anybody who belonged

to my church congregation knew that we were open for Easter and they were

invited to join us. And with all those potential visitors in mind, we would spend the

week leading up to Easter sprucing up the church. Odd repairs that had been

ignored were tended to – the toilet that wouldn’t stop flushing was finally fixed, the

source of that odd smell in the nursery was discovered and eliminated. On Saturday

night, volunteers showed up to add extra folding chairs to the ends of aisles. We

always worried that the fire Marshall might show up and tell us that we were

blocking fire exits and seating was beyond capacity for our space. Wherever we

found an extra two-foot space we lodged another folding chair.

Early on Sunday morning, volunteers would arrive to direct visitors into parking

spots and to greet them as they entered the foyer. Everyone had been coached to

have breath mints handy, treat the guests nicely, smile often and brightly and please

above all else get them to fill out the guest information card so that we might contact

them later and invite them to visit with us again. Regular church attendees knew to

head straight to the back parking lots that were just gravel to allow the guests the

prime, asphalt paved spots. There was always special music and volunteer singers

who would have been rehearsing for weeks ahead of time. They sang Easter themed

songs that showed how talented and gifted our church was. In fact, the choir

remained on the platform for the entire service so we could open up more seats in
the congregation. We always appreciated the Sunday school teachers most at

Easter. They gave up the joy of participating in the adult worship service, the most

spectacularly planned and executed of the year, so that they could teach to all those

visitors’ children about Jesus.

With all of this effort put into getting so many people in the pews, and all of the

effort into making the service run smoothly, it also meant some added pressure for

Dad. All the emphasis on new faces in the audience meant that his sermon needed

to be perfect. He had to achieve multiple objectives at once – he needed to preach to

the people who knew they should be living differently as well as the people

oblivious to Jesus’ teachings, all the while presenting our church as just the thing

that might be missing from their lives. And along the way, he always wanted to

reach those of us who had sacrificed so much in the days leading up to that special

Sunday. How could one sermon meet so many needs? I am sure it was never

accomplished without great prayer and study on his part. Although no single Easter

sermon stands out in my memory, I know he always covered the usual Easter

points: death, burial and resurrection. These were often turned into stories of love,

forgiveness and eternal life. I can guarantee that every year his sermon would

include an opportunity to make peace with God right then and there. My father has

a hugely charismatic and engaging personality and really can move a crowd to both

tears and laughter easily. It is still a pleasure for me to listen to him and watch him

work a crowd.
We were all usually so relieved when the service was over and it had gone well.

There were ushers given the task of counting the number of people who had come

to church that day. There were always multiple numbers floating around: how

many people in total? How many visitors verses congregants? How many kids in the

children’s program? The number in total was the most important, and that was the

one that went into the record books. I am sure my father hoped that each year the

number would be higher than the year before. This is something that preachers

share with each other, the number of congregants who attend their church. Suppose

our church had about 800 people in attendance on a given Sunday morning.

Throughout the year, I might hear my father respond to questions regarding the size

of his congregation. He might say something like “well, let’s see, last year I believe

we had 1347 in attendance on Easter.” Yes, Pastors have egos to protect too….

I could write another story all about the shopping that went along with the weekend

of Easter too. Everyone I knew, even the poorest congregants, bought a new outfit

for Easter service. Many women wore hats and it was the first day of the season

when we could wear white shoes. We would beg our choir director to please, please,

please, not make us wear our choir robes on Easter Sunday just so that we could

show off our beautiful new dresses. Easter dressing was one of the few times my

mother and I agreed on clothes. It was always modest, girlie, and springy. One year

my best friend and I went to the mall without our mothers and bought matching

Easter pastel plaid dresses, white shoes and purses. We obsessed about it for weeks

and on sleepovers would try the outfits on and do each other’s hair to figure out
how to wear it on the big day. A large part of our congregation was black, either

African American or immigrants from the Caribbean Islands and that meant some

amazing hats showed up on Easter. I think there were even a few years I got caught

up in that particular excitement and wore some huge and exciting hats.

After service, we’d go back to my house, just the four of us. We’d have a ham,

scalloped potatoes and a green salad and we’d relive the day all over again. We

discussed all the mistakes people had made, how this usher had mistakenly lead

people to rows that were full, how this soloist had forgotten to wear a slip and the

platform lights had shown through her dress. And we’d tell each other how much

the visitors had enjoyed themselves and how impressed with our church they must

have been. If we were lucky enough to have actually spoken to a visitor then we

could report verbatim what was said. We were all hungry for good reports from all

of our efforts. In the weeks to come, teams of people would meet at the church

offices to telephone all of those guests who had filled out the guest information form

(and given their true telephone numbers!) and they would be invited to return and

visit us again, join one of the many classes that our church offered or take advantage

of the many programs we had. Whoever thought pastoring a church was nothing

more than hanging a shingle and giving a Sunday sermon was dead wrong. There

was a massive marketing and public relations effort that went along with it and it

was mostly executed by an army of happy volunteers ages 9 – 90. On the annual

calendar, few opportunities arose where we could impact local exposure of our

church as much as Easter.

The Christmas my own children were 4 and 6 I organized a tiny little children’s

Christmas pageant for the families at the church where we attended at the time. It

was a church filled mostly at the time with poverty stricken minority families, or

recent immigrants from Samoa. The pastor of the church likened the effort I had put

forth as similar to building an actual house out of legos. I had to make all of the

costumes and scenery myself, and spend hours alone with kids ages 2-10 helping

them memorize their lines, and learn to sing Christmas Carols. It was the first time I

had ever been in charge of anything like this and I was exhausted by the effort.

When it was all said and done, it was huge roaring success. Apparently, one of the

customs in Samoa is to bring money, waving it around in the air, down to the front

of the church and lay it in front of the children while they are performing. I still

don’t know if this is a religious custom, or a secular custom. Let’s just say I was

shocked to see old Grandmas waving dollar bills as they walked down the aisle

while their grandsons were speaking the words of the shepherds seeing the star. At

the end of the pageant there was a pile of money - perhaps a few hundred dollars –

to be given to the children’s program. Not a bad custom.

As we were driving home from church that day, my husband was complimenting the

effort I had made and I must admit I did get a little bit high that the event had gone

off so successfully. I laughingly told him I might just try to organize an Easter

Pageant since the Christmas one had gone so well. My 4-year-old de-robed

shepherd son piped up in the back seat, “What’s Easter?” My 6-year-old who had
taken off her angel wings just moments before confidently answered, “That’s

something that happens in Hawaii.”

After getting over the shock that these two kids – children of a Sunday school

teacher no less, didn’t know the magnitude of Easter, I realized that in fact my

daughter was absolutely correct. Easter is something that happens in Hawaii. In fact

it had been happening to her in Hawaii ever since she could remember. That it

happens all over the world as well, was not important. But it made me ask myself,

What is important about Easter?

Certainly, while growing up I saw “behind the curtain” of the life of a church. I was

happily pressed into service for the church since before I could even remember.

Easter was about recruiting new members. That was the “professional business” of

what the church was doing on Easter. But at the same time that the business of

running a church was happening, such as the marketing, recruiting, public relations,

advertising, there was also a lot of individual, personal “spiritual business” taking

place on those same church pews.

The Easter story, which begins with the palm paved entry into Jerusalem, and

continues with the Lord’s supper, the agony of Christ’s humanity in the garden of

Gethsemane, continues through Judas’s betrayal, Jesus’ capture and his trial. It gets

sadder as we re-tell the story of Peter’s betrayal and Christ’s suffering and death,

and then fills us with hope as we recount His glorious resurrection from the grave,

and His appearance and visitation to his followers. There is so much in that story
for so many people to connect to. How my father ever narrowed down which part of

the story to focus on for a particular Sunday is beyond me. Now that I am an adult, I

love to read the various parts of the story and find new ways of relating to the

characters.

The last supper and foot washing remind me that we are all part of a big family of

followers of Christ and when we participate in these re-enactments we are uniting

ourselves together as one body made up of diverse parts.

Peter’s denial reminds me that I should never get cocky about my level of sincerity

or commitment to Christ. I could probably be talked into trading it for a

cheeseburger if a certain amount of time had passed between my meals.

When I read about the physical pain Jesus endured, I am comforted that although He

did not spare one of my friends from the pain of cancer and treatment, He suffered

along with her and knew her pain.

When I read about Christ’s resurrection I am filled with hope that I too will rise to

meet Him in that place He has gone to prepare for me.

When I read about His visitation to the women on the road I am thrilled beyond

belief that it was to women he chose to show his resurrected self first. What a
powerful statement Christ made! Men surrounded Him, yet He wanted His female

followers to know how much He valued them.

When I read about Thomas, one of Christ’s disciples who could not get his head

around Christ’s re-appearance and will be forever known as “Doubting Thomas,” I

see myself asking God to prove that He is real. Of course, just as He did for Thomas,

He does for me over and over again.

At times I am overwhelmed by how much there is in the Easter message. There

really is just so much more than can be shared in one simple sermon.

In Hawaii, we visit all kinds of different churches on Easter. We’re not catholic, I’ve

been referring to my Dad the preacher, after all, but one year we vacationed along

with some close friends who were and so we visited a Catholic church with them. I

still remember the sweet Filipino priest who had such a thick accent I never did get

a sense of his sermon, but the love he had for God flowed so profoundly from him

that I received a peaceful touch of God’s love through the story of Christ’s ultimate

sacrifice anyway.

One year we went to a sunrise service at our hotel and a local evangelical preacher

had been brought in to lead a scraggly group of tired vacationers through an

ecumenical service on the beach. Later in the hot tub, my husband and I had a

robust discussion with another couple about why that preacher had dared say that
Jesus was the only path to Heaven. They were quite miffed about it and felt that he

had used the service as a bully pulpit of sorts when it was obvious that the group of

hotel guests just wanted a nice sermon to make them feel warm and fuzzy about

Easter before it was time for the Easter egg hunt on the lawn above the beach. I

didn’t really know what to think about it. Having lived for so long “behind the

curtain of ministry” and knowing so deeply what an opportunity the Easter sermon

was, I was tempted to agree with them. I kind of thought the minister had blown the

whole marketing and public relations aspect of his job. But then my husband said in

a very nonchalant way, “Well, if the poor guy can’t preach the same message that

Jesus preached --I am the way the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father

except by me -- on Easter Sunday, when can he preach it?” The couple and I were

silent amidst the bubbles of the hot tub as we pondered that one.

I am typing this right now on a plane flying home from Maui where we spent spring

break again this year. Next door to our hotel were three large restaurants and in

one of them were signs reading, Beach Ministry Easter Service 8am, Come as you are.

The restaurant was only about 100 feet away from our hotel. From our lanai we

could see white folding chairs being set up on the lawn around the restaurant, and

grass mats laid out even further back. Because we could see the seats filling up, we

arrived 15 minutes early. I could tell that this Beach ministry was made up of

volunteers from a nearby town. I imagined them having a proper church with actual

pews, and that these volunteers had done all of the preparation for Easter that I had

experienced as a child. There were women in matching flower dresses with leis
handing out the bulletins. There were men ushering guests to additional seating.

There was a praise band playing hip island style Easter songs. During the service

there were some hula dance performances. It was all very cool and laid back and a

great way for vacationers to enjoy their Easter Sunday. And then the preacher

began his sermon entitled “The Good News You Can Use.”

He didn’t go into detail about all of the biblical events that happened around Easter.

He simply told us that Jesus died because He loved us, that His death meant we

might find forgiveness for our sins, and that through our belief in this and through

His resurrection, we can know we have power over death and sin and that we will

join Him in Heaven when our earthly bodies die. I agreed with his sermon title –

that is all good news I can use.

What I love about the Easter message is that it’s good news for the Caribbean born

fancy hat wearers, the Samoan Grandmothers, the Hawaiian Hula Dancers, and the

women who were visiting Christ’s tomb. My 10 year old can relax in the knowledge

that his sins, past, present and future will be forgiven and he will be reconciled with

the Father. My friends can know that while they are weeping in their own garden of

Gethsemane over a failed marriage, an ill parent or a wayward child, that their

personal resurrection could be just around the corner. When I am lonesome I can

partake of communion and know that though I may feel lonely, I am never on my

own in the body of Christ. When I fail to live and love the way Jesus has shown me

--- even if I fail three times before the cock crows as Peter did after Jesus’ arrest --- I
can know that He will still forgive me. In my doubting Thomas moments, I can know

that Jesus will offer to show Himself to me in a new way, whatever way I most need

at that moment.

Yes, Easter happens on spring break in Hawaii, but it happens everywhere else all

through out the year too. It can happen wherever I am and whenever I reach for it.