Easter Reflections from an Ex-Pastor

Losing My Religion, Finding Resurrection

It’s Easter Sunday, the Christian observance of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

For many, Easter is a celebration. But for others, it’s meaningless. For some, it’s complicated. Painful, even.

But here’s the thing, regardless of religious beliefs, traditions, or affiliations:

Easter is an invitation for everyone.

Easter doesn’t ask us to believe something happened once. It dares us to notice what’s trying to rise in us and through us now…

Our always cute, but sometimes naughty bunny, Posie. Maybe the Easter winds can change her too!

I remember a lot of Easters.

Sitting in the cushioned wooden pews, listening to eternally long sermons, and standing to belt out a bunch of Alleluias when it was time.
The post-church feasts with my family, lovingly prepared by my mom, where my little brother slurped up as much gravy as possible.

Wearing pastels for spring break Easters in Florida with Grandma and Grandpa and a congregation of gray-haired snowbirds.
A Good Friday family dinner at a slope-side restaurant in the Colorado Rockies, feeling sad as I saw a man eating alone, and where, apparently, we all forgot it was my older brother’s birthday.

Emotionally moving college Tenebrae services, marking the descent into darkness and the death of Jesus, where candles were slowly extinguished until it was pitch black.
Years later, leading Easter Sunday services as a pastor in the back of the sketchy Chinese restaurant where we gathered, including the year I dressed in black because two babies in our community had died a few months earlier, and even Easter didn’t feel very hopeful.
And the time I baptized fourteen people in a trough—wait, it was just one person, but she did have fourteen fake online identities that she had created as part of an elaborate scheme to lie about who she was and get sympathy and god knows what else from our community. Correction: that wasn’t anywhere close to Easter, but apparently I’m still processing it! Remind me to share the rest of the story sometime…

My memories of Easter are good memories. Celebration. Belonging. Hope.

But these days, Easter is different.

Five years ago, after almost fifteen years as a minister, I gave up my ordination. For a lot of reasons.
Because I disagreed with denominational positions on social issues.
Because I was tired of translating my thought and practice to fit rigid belief systems.
Because I was done trying to change things from the inside-out.

But, mostly, because my decades-long pursuit of the Mystery had naturally led me beyond the confines of so-called orthodox Christianity. For years leading up to giving up my ordination, I gradually had been realizing that my home was not among the biblical scholars, the priests, the believers. My home had always been among the mystics—those who prioritize inner experience of the divine, those who seek the something more—the contemplatives who are found not only throughout Christian history, but across all traditions.

This shift was disorienting—and also not at all!

Realizing that I no longer felt at home in my faith complicated things.

If I was leaving my faith, did that also mean I was leaving behind the loving community that had raised me in that faith? Would they still welcome me?

If I didn’t fit there anymore, where did I belong?

And, remember that I was a pastor, so in a sense, my confession—what I believed—was my profession. It was a calling that I found deeply fulfilling. Had I gotten my vocation wrong this whole time? What would I do now?

This process was profoundly destabilizing and raised so many more deep questions.

I write about this experience in my book The Way Home.

But the experience was also, ultimately, grounding.

Probably because a deeper part of me always knew that I was on the mystical path of the perennial tradition. My spirituality had been growing in a particular pot—a tradition that provided the nourishing container I needed. But beneath the surface, my roots kept extending deeper and deeper, until they reached the edges of the pot, and cracked it open. It was time to be transferred to more vast, unbounded soil so that the plant could continue to grow.

Indeed so much growth has happened. These past five years have been filled with so many profound discoveries and realizations. I’m still trying to figure out how to put words to it, how to talk about it. But my way of being has been fundamentally, irreversibly altered—transforming my relationship with myself, others, and the world.

But despite these external shifts of religious affiliation and vocational expression, and internal expansions of the heart and mind, one thing hasn’t changed:

I love the Easter story.

The Gospel of Mark includes my favorite telling of the Easter story in the Bible.

Here’s how it goes:

Jesus is crucified, dies, and is buried in a tomb. A few days later, three women (fundamentalists, take note!) go to the tomb to anoint his body. When they arrive, they see that the stone has been rolled away and a young man dressed in white (an angel?) tells them, Jesus isn’t here. He has risen. Go tell the others!

Hearing these words and seeing that Jesus’ body is gone, they are absolutely freaked out!

The Gospel of Mark (16:8) describes what happens next:
“Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.”

Then, it says…

Nothing.

I mean it. Nothing.

This is how the story ends. And not just this story, but the entire Gospel of Mark!

The ending was so shocking that there were later attempts by early readers of this story to edit the ending and add a closing statement.
In one case, a nice, quotable conclusion: Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.
In another, a more bizarre ending: In my name… they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all.

But the original ending just cuts off there with the terrified women running away from the tomb. A massive cliffhanger! Just like how The Sopranos finale went black and we don’t know if Tony got shot or not, we’re left wondering what happens next.

In fact―if I can get really nerdy here for a sec―the final sentence ends with the Greek word GAR. Sentences in Greek NEVER end with the word GAR. It is a transitional word, always leading to something else. But not here. Here the author intentionally ends the story with bad grammar.

Why?

To get the listener caught up in the story.
To draw the audience (originally Christians being persecuted by the Roman Empire) into the footsteps of the story.
To let the audience know that Jesus has risen―life has conquered death―but the next step… the next step belongs to you, to me, to us.

The invitation of the Easter story is not to believe it.

Whether or not Jesus actually rose from the dead is not the point.
But this is the truest of true stories.
Because it proclaims a universal pattern, celebrated across culture, place, and time:

Death doesn’t get the last word.
New life is always possible.
Everything―including you―can be reborn.

The invitation of the Easter story is to live it.

The invitation is to take the next step in order to align your life with this universal pattern.
Admitting when you are lost so that you can be found.
Embracing life’s trials as seeds of transformation.
Acknowledging your pain so that instead of passing it on, it can be transformed into possibility.

The invitation is to die to the ways that are no longer serving you―and causing harm to you and others―so that you can rise into a fuller, freer version of yourself. And not just for yourself, but so that you become a generative presence, an active participant in bringing renewal to the hurting world around you.

I’m staking my life on this claim. Still.

Like the three women on that first Easter, I continue to stumble away from this story of rising… with a sense—no, a knowing—that new beginnings are always possible.

And it keeps bringing me to the most interesting places.
To hospice beds and prisons.
To midlife wisdom schools and the courageous coaching clients I get to accompany on their inner journeys.
To the greatest, everyday adventure of being a husband and father, friend, and citizen.

We each carry this resurrection story differently—stumbling, searching, showing up in our own way. There’s no one way to respond to the story of new life. But each of us is invited to bring forward whatever healing, hope, or renewal we’re here to offer.

I’ll be back in church this Sunday, one of the few times I go each year.

I’ll remember, with gratitude, the safety and belonging I experienced in my youth.
I’ll miss the beautiful community I got to start and lead as a pastor.
I’ll feast again with my family (thanks, mom!).
I’ll celebrate the powerful gift of new life.

And, you know what?

For all who are suffering in these troubled times, I might even wear black again.
And if anyone asks me why, I’ll send them to Johnny Cash:

Well, you wonder why I always dress in black
I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down
Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime
But is there because he's a victim of the times…

I wear it for the sick and lonely old
For the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold
I wear the black in mournin' for the lives that could have been
Each week we lose a hundred fine young men

Happy Easter to all!
It’s time to rise up!