When Holy Week comes around each year, I normally dread “Sunday is coming” posts. I don’t want to skip past the bad parts. I don’t want to skip Jesus’ death. We need to sit in the weight of that devastation, I think. We need to feel the burden of Jesus’ unjust death at the hands of a power-hungry Empire. We can’t miss how Jesus became a scapegoat. How the cross mirrors back to us our thirst for violence.
Saturday is my default position. I know suffering as an objective fact, and I'm often anxious to see resurrection reveal itself as the truth that trumps that fact. I find myself caught in doing the math of Saturday, trying to figure out and explain to myself how the algebra of penal substitution works out. I know the equation's solution but "with fear and trembling" I try to show my work on paper, wanting it to be undeniable that x does indeed cancel out y. I feel like this will make Sunday more true.
So, Savannah, your words cut through my posture of head scratching and fearful erasing: "Christ’s resurrection means the whole thing- every corner of the universe- does not end in death, but life." The simplicity, goodness, and magnitude of that sentence is what I want to embrace this Easter. Christ's resurrection is enough in and of itself without my defense or explanation of it.
It all ends in life. It all ends in life. It all ends in life.
This year, I am more aware of the injustice of Jesus’ innocent death. I don’t avoid it like I used to. I hope the Easter Sunday resurrection theme will help me solidify my hope that Jesus works injustice to a great good.
Also, I know that the Lord knows everyone’s genetic code. He won’t need our original atoms to create our resurrected bodies—as usual, he will speak us into perfect re-creation.
My pastor read a news article on the lives of the victims this past Sunday for a dual Palm Sunday/Good Friday service to drive the point home that in demanding our rights (not just about guns either), we forget that there are real people who had real hopes and dreams and families who have to sit with this devastation. What would it be like if we as a nation learned how to mourn and sit with the pain and not just use it as a “growth opportunity” or a “teachable moment?” We don’t want to arrive at Sunday numbed by trivialities like the egg hunting or brunch or floral sundresses, even though there’s nothing wrong with those.
But I too crave the hope of Sunday. It’s kinda weird to sit in this tension in the “now/not yet” aspect of the kingdom because it feels like we’re in the middle of a second Saturday waiting for the full Easter to come where all things are made right and new. This is holy AND hard AND beautiful. Standing with you. 💔❤️
Saturday is my default position. I know suffering as an objective fact, and I'm often anxious to see resurrection reveal itself as the truth that trumps that fact. I find myself caught in doing the math of Saturday, trying to figure out and explain to myself how the algebra of penal substitution works out. I know the equation's solution but "with fear and trembling" I try to show my work on paper, wanting it to be undeniable that x does indeed cancel out y. I feel like this will make Sunday more true.
So, Savannah, your words cut through my posture of head scratching and fearful erasing: "Christ’s resurrection means the whole thing- every corner of the universe- does not end in death, but life." The simplicity, goodness, and magnitude of that sentence is what I want to embrace this Easter. Christ's resurrection is enough in and of itself without my defense or explanation of it.
It all ends in life. It all ends in life. It all ends in life.
This year, I am more aware of the injustice of Jesus’ innocent death. I don’t avoid it like I used to. I hope the Easter Sunday resurrection theme will help me solidify my hope that Jesus works injustice to a great good.
Also, I know that the Lord knows everyone’s genetic code. He won’t need our original atoms to create our resurrected bodies—as usual, he will speak us into perfect re-creation.
My pastor read a news article on the lives of the victims this past Sunday for a dual Palm Sunday/Good Friday service to drive the point home that in demanding our rights (not just about guns either), we forget that there are real people who had real hopes and dreams and families who have to sit with this devastation. What would it be like if we as a nation learned how to mourn and sit with the pain and not just use it as a “growth opportunity” or a “teachable moment?” We don’t want to arrive at Sunday numbed by trivialities like the egg hunting or brunch or floral sundresses, even though there’s nothing wrong with those.
But I too crave the hope of Sunday. It’s kinda weird to sit in this tension in the “now/not yet” aspect of the kingdom because it feels like we’re in the middle of a second Saturday waiting for the full Easter to come where all things are made right and new. This is holy AND hard AND beautiful. Standing with you. 💔❤️