Easter is messy, the Spirit said as I was working on the backdrop for Easter. It was the day before Easter, the sermon had been written and there she was: Easter is messy.

I don’t know about you, but I’m over “messy.” The last 14 months have been the messiest months I have ever lived. So what to do with the words of the Spirit? You know how when you get an annoying song in your head that won’t leave for days and days? That is how this phrase felt that Holy Saturday and in the days since to be honest. Easter is messy, I would blurt out to whomever happened to be around: friends, parents, cat, dog, members. Like when you start humming or singing the song in your head simply because it is in your head. Easter is messy.

The more I think about this “gift” from the Spirit, the more I move from the anxiety and annoyance of “Easter is messy” toward the assurance and love and profound truth and beauty of the if.

What do I mean by that? Well, I mean this: God in her wisdom came to us to live life—the whole messy business from birth to death and all that comes in between. In the person of Jesus, God was born (which is a messy business) and then lived and died. God was here. Then after his death, he chose to re-enter our messy lives full of emotions and stress and fear and happiness and things to do and things we didn’t get done, to re-enter the lives of those who denied him and those who cared for him until the end. In that moment of re-entry, Jesus upends our lives in the most beautiful way. In a way that reminds us that even in everything that life is, God is present, ready to remind us that we are loved and forgiven and never alone. In a way no other deity had ever done, our God showed us the way and then reassured us that even when it isn’t perfect or neat, it is enough that we follow.

As I reflect on this past year, I see this truth. I see it in the ways God met me in my uncertainty, my grief, my sadness, my joy and in the very ordinary rhythms of my day. God wove herself into the mess that was a year of pandemic and did what was promised in Jesus because grace and love and forgiveness were ours to have, no matter what.

Easter is messy, the Spirit said.

Thanks be to God. Alleluia!