CREEDE HINSHAW: The mysterious power of an Easter sunrise service

What attracts people year after year to the Easter sunrise service? These early morning gatherings are unpredictable, to say the least.

Some years the weather couldn’t be more conducive to outdoor worship, but often that’s not the case. Late March and/or early April can potentially promise violent thunderstorms, chilly, damp, dreary or downright cold weather. And every once in awhile comes the dreaded convergence of Easter Sunday with time change, guaranteeing that those resolved to attend the Sunrise Service get one hour less sleep.

It makes no difference. Throngs of worshipers attend sunrise services annually. Some family groups have attended the same sunrise service for decades. We return out of habit or duty or expectation or even nostalgia, remembering when our parents took us to similar services when we were but young.

I wouldn’t be surprised is somewhere somebody is substituting a Facebook or Twitter sunrise service to keep up with modernity. The internet is a wonderful thing, but who would tweet Easter sunrise as long as one could attend in person?

And so many of us will rise much earlier than usual this Easter Sunday, ignoring creaky, achy joints, bundling babies and small children, braving a cold morning by pulling out a topcoat and scarf or resigning self to shivering in a sleeveless Easter dress or blue jeans and a tee shirt.

We will fire up the car, turn on our headlights and drive to a pasture or cemetery or church yard or lakeside or hilltop somewhere, stumble or shuffle through the early morning darkness, hand wrapped around a cup of coffee or hot chocolate, maybe carrying a lawn chair or a blanket, and find a place to sit or stand with dozens or hundreds of others whose faces are barely coming into view.

The music may or may not be inspiring. Voices tend to get swallowed up in the great outdoors. The preaching may or may not be riveting. Maybe the preacher, facing two-three more services that day, is pacing himself. Maybe the preacher is a retiree or a youth pastor. Even the best preacher recognizes that after 2,000 years there’s not a lot new to say on this morning. Veteran attendees can probably preach the message as well as the Easter evangel in front of them.

These are minor matters. What matters is that we are here, that we have returned to a place, maybe the spangled stars overhead, maybe a hint of dawn on the horizon, hoping to gain some correspondence – no matter how tenuous – with that first Easter at a mysteriously empty Jerusalem tomb.

Swallowed up by the immensity of the universe unfettered by church walls and listening to a mockingbird sing to the Lord God Almighty, the assembled multitude — people of all churches and no church, friend and stranger, hopeful and hopeless — affirms with one voice that ageless, miraculous, monumental proclamation of faith, “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!”

Email columnist Creede Hinshaw, a retired Methodist minuster, at [email protected].