Easter???

I walked out of church on Easter Sunday morning. Part of me thought I shouldn’t because it would be considered rude, but I just couldn’t stay there while my spirit longed for a more intimate connection with God. Also when I went back in I didn’t take communion. I know, how shocking, but I’m sure it says in the Bible not to take communion lightly and with the wrong heart. My heart wasn’t in that place. Not that I wasn’t thankful, grateful and all those things that we acknowledge at Easter, I was and I am, I just wasn’t about to take it because of form. Form is what has been getting to me. The package is seemingly empty and I want more than that.

And I’ve heard all the arguments that we are supposed to be part of the church and use our gifts for the church, and that I shouldn’t go to church for myself and what I get out of it. You know what though? If church is like the family dinner you are obligated to go to that you leave feeling as though there were no connections and it was a waste of time, then is that the position I want to place myself in, in my relationship with God? I think not. I want something real. Honest. I can’t remember the last time during a worship service that people singing about bowing their knees before God, actually did that. I can’t remember that last time it was bought to my attention in church that “woe to me…I am ruined! I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” (Isaiah 6) I cannot remember the last time someone from a pulpit said God is King, he is Sovereign he deserves the bent knee, the downcast eye and the bowed head.

Back to the Easter service. It ended with prayers to God to overcome our problems and bless us. Of course as I had walked out it’s entirely possible I missed something, though the small bit of the service I heard indicated that that something wasn’t the something I was longing for. Honestly it left a really bad taste in my mouth. Should Easter Sunday not be the day we take a break from coming to God with our hand out asking for more and simply be grateful for the awesome, absolutely earth-shattering sacrifice that made Easter, Easter.