Pandemic Easter Litany — by Rev. Melissa Reed
This year
we couldn’t kneel down
and wash one another’s feet
but parents kneel by the tub and wash their babies
before bed and pray for another day
and we wash our own hands lovingly, thoroughly
for our neighbors and strangers we will never meet.
Your Love always finds a way, O God. Alleluia!
This year
we couldn’t break bread with friends
and pass the cup of blessing
but grocery store clerks stock the shelves
and healthcare workers suit up,
giving their bodies
so that we may eat and live.
Your Love always finds a way, O God. Alleluia!
This year
we couldn’t walk the stations of the cross together
through our sanctuary or neighborhood
but a father waits in line for food,
carrying the cross,
and a teacher works endless hours from home,
carrying the cross,
and a sanitation worker still wakes before the sun,
to carry away our trash,
carrying the cross.
Your Love always finds a way, O God. Alleluia!
This year
we couldn’t share the emptiness of the stripped altar,
waiting and praying in the silence,
but the whole world now holds vigil moment to moment
as bodies are taken from respirators and
wait to be buried without ritual –
not buried alone,
but with Jesus,
like seeds in the ground.
Your Love always finds a way, O God. Alleluia!\
This year
we couldn’t share God’s big stories
in the way we are used to – not from a page and pulpit –
and stay up all night to light the holy fire,
but as the holy breath brooded over the chaos,
we discover our shared breath in a way we can no longer deny
and as the dry bones came together,
we are learning to come together in the way you made us
and as our ancestors were liberated from Egypt,
so our Earth gasps deeply in her liberation from our oppression
and our cities are lit, once again, by the holy fire of the stars.
Your Love always finds a way, O God. Alleluia!
This year
we couldn’t fill our sanctuaries with lilies
and lift our voices together — not in the way we are used to —
but this Easter morning we wake and walk with Mary in fear and trembling
to the edges of the tomb
and find a crack –
the promise of the tulips’ opening,
the strangers’ smile on the street,
the announcement of a babe born —
“we are being made new,” she cries —
the breath of life in our lungs that MUST proclaim with each
in and out:
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Your Love always finds a way, O God. Alleluia!
