10:45 ish. We check the schedule on the Catholic church's door. We have a little over an hour until the Easter mass. We decide to go take pictures on the beach.
11:55. Back at the church, but there is no one there. Just one man dinking around on the other side of the flowers. We make a loop around the church to see if there is another door open, There isn't.
12:01. A man comes across the street and asks us something. I tell him, yes, we'd like to attend an Easter service. He tells us to wait there and he'll unlock the door.
12:20. Still sitting in the second to the front row, looking at the life-size bleeding Jesus on the cross, watching the two sacerdotes throw together an order of worship and get a tiny amount of sacrements ready. The three other non-locals who were waiting for something to happen have already left. We want to leave too. If the service ever starts, we are just going to make fools of ourselves by not knowing how to cross ourselves correctly. We laugh off the awkwardness in a whisper.
12:25. The sacerdotes are in the room off to the side singing/chanting. Then they walk out to the courtyard. That's the last straw. We get our things and go. They say "buenas" as we walk out.
There was no more nervous laughing as we walked down the street, quickly so as to shake off the silence and uneasiness. I was mad. There had been seven Christians in that church for a few minutes that Easter morning, but there had been no gathering in the name of the resurrected Savior. Jesus was alive again and all we did was stare at a statue of his bloody body.
I missed my protestant church. At that moment, the congregation of Iglesia Prosperidad was overflowing and God's word was being spoken with passion and conviction. At that moment, my parents were getting out of bed to go and attend the Easter sunrise service followed by a breakfast potluck. All over the world people were singing, "Christ the Lord is risen today," and "Up from the grave he arose!"
It made me mad that no one, hardly even the sacerdotes, seemed to care that Jesus had really brought himself to liberating life again after being very violently dead for three days. Maybe they didn't know. How deeply do I know this myself?
We went to the beach, ran in the water, screamed at it's coldness, laughed and splashed, collected shells, then settled into the cliffside to warm in the sun. Alissa brought out her iPod and we celebrated the rising of the Son of God as the sun slowly set over a rising tide. At the top of our lungs, we sang Keith Green's "Easter Song." I hope that we didn't bother the girls who were tanning topless twenty feet away.
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