I always hesitate to write about Easter and Resurrection before we get to the day. I feel funny signing cards or sometimes answering a greeting in a store with Happy Easter when Jesus hasn’t gotten to the meal or the garden — or the cross, let alone to resurrection.
Why? It is a story I treasure, from Palm Sunday to Easter, that teaches and re-teaches me every year. For me there is a short changing of important truths when I don’t take time to engage the slow walk from Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem through the week of teaching, bitter sorrow, much love, goodbyes, betrayals, the cross, the silence of Saturday, and then — and only then – resurrection.
Baby chicks, bunnies and beautiful flowers that make me sneeze lean heavily into the resurrection celebration, but that celebration does not stand without the rest of it, including my own consideration of where I might have stood along Jesus’ way. Would I have spoken up or gone with the crowd? (How many times have I struggled with THAT question lately in the current climate? I digress.)
As I go through this time, I try to mark the moments of learning and deepening so that I won’t forget them!
This morning while reading the blog of an amazing young woman I know, I had one such moment. She was amazing before these last few weeks following a brain tumor diagnoses, but her articulate portrayal of some of her journey towards surgery is brave and remarkable and vulnerable and all kinds of things that make me grateful to know she and her family even just a little bit. And I hate that they have this to bear.
But here is what I remembered this morning so very loudly while reading: On Saturday of Holy Week (there is that full journey again!) Jesus’ disciples only knew he was gone; they only knew the loss and the drastic changes in their world. They didn’t know what was coming on Easter Sunday. They didn’t know resurrection or that God’s final word was life – life not in a trivial way but in a real and substantive way!
But we do.
We do.
I can’t imagine life without that awareness!
And we can trust in that Word through anything that we bear. Life is on the other side — I confess the unknown of that life can sometimes be scary and disconcerting. I would be a liar not to own that. But I know that God holds it. And my call is to trust in that future – do all that I can, and trust, because it is held by the one who burst into new life and invites me to follow.
Always. Amen.
Sue
Rev. Susan Faye Wonderland
Transitional Executive
Synod of the Trinity