I like traditions. There’s something deeply moving about
stepping again into well-tread footsteps; feeling the weight of years in every
movement. The little heft of my few years, yes, but also the substance of
generations past, carried out in the repetition of small acts from the lives
that came before me.
For as long as I can remember, we’ve had a braided loaf of sweet bread on the
table on Easter Sunday. My grandpa started it when he found the recipe in one of his mother’s old
cookbooks, and when he died, my mom and uncles took up the tradition, baking
the golden-brown braids every year. My recipe is a copy of my mom’s: typewritten
on yellowed paper, stained in places where kids, eager to help, spilled. There
are substitution notes in the margins as ingredient availability changed
through time: ground cinnamon instead of oil of cinnamon; anise extract instead
of oil of anise. And the process of baking this Easter bread is from a
different time, too, not something you can whip out in an hour.
It’s a deliberate series of mixing, resting, kneading, resting, shaping,
resting, and then finally baking.
How fitting is that for a bread made just for this time, on
the day between Good Friday and Easter? There was no quick fix for the
brokenness of the world. There was only a Life, lived day by day, each one
carrying Him closer and closer to the cross. And with His death came agonized
waiting that felt nothing like rest, but more like a beaten, bruised heart,
kneaded to death. Except that it wasn’t the end. The kneading was essential for
the reshaping of the world; the heat of death embraced and then overcome was
vital to bring the world back to wholeness and beauty.
Such a perfect metaphor, this liturgy of making Easter bread.
And this year, this month, this day… have I ever needed this truth to be
tangible more than I do now? I knead the dough smooth, and my heart fights for
peace to trust as the numbers of COVID-19 deaths climb higher. I set the dough
in a bowl, cover it with a cloth, and drag my mind back from thoughts of the
shaking economy and my children’s futures.
The dough rises. I wait.
And then I take it up again, divide it into thirds, braid
them together, and wait some more. I brush the top with egg and water; sprinkle
sesame seeds on top. I wrap my fingers around the edges of the pan, and feel in
my mind the presence of the people who have made this before, year after year,
in times of war and recession and heartache and fear. My heart settles; my
whirring thoughts still. How are those times any different than now? The pain
of them, just like the pain of this pandemic, are all part of the fallen world
that Jesus Christ died to redeem. And as He said, it is finished. The
work is done. All that is left to do now is wait.
And so I will.
The bread bakes, turning golden like the sunrise of Easter
morning, and the smell fills the house as hope once again fills my heart to
overflowing.
