Dear Friends in Christ:
We are about to complete our Lenten journey as we prepare to enter Holy Week. There we will be joining Jesus of Nazareth during his final days on earth. Come with me as we learn not just about God, but perhaps a little something about ourselves.
As Jesus enters Jerusalem, a king representing a kingdom not of this world, we will hear the crowd’s shouts of adoration as we cry “Hosanna!” We will sit with him at the last supper, where instead of putting on a crown and taking up a sceptre, he will put on a towel and prepare to take up the cross. In an act of humility, we will recall that Jesus kneeled before his servants, washing our feet. As he gives them a new commandment to love one another, they will struggle and sometimes fail because in our broken humanity, we just don’t seem able to get it right.
Praying in a garden, Jesus will experience agony while his apostles sleep and he begs us to stay awake with him a little longer. He will be tried by the political leaders of the day and found guilty of a crime that says more about us, than him. As his friends abandon him in his greatest hour of need, Peter’s tears will blend with ours as we bow our heads in shame. Later, we will stand silently watching numbered with the bystanders, as he is crucified, numbered with the criminals. In time, they will forget what we ignore: that he was crucified among the crucified. Devastated and shattered by the outcome of a tragic ending, his apostles will withdraw alongside us to hide behind locked doors and shuttered windows.
Three days of darkness and heartsickness will consume them until we discover the empty tomb and they try to make sense of it all. They will go on to meet the Risen Christ in the coming days as he continues to break bread with us.
And so, this is Easter: an historical event that has little to do with history and everything to do with the ever living reality that bears witness to God’s activity in the world and in us. The story of Easter is our story.
Easter invites us to celebrate the truth of the Resurrection; a whole new creation that God is making from the ashes of our lives. It compels us to journey with the living Christ as he transforms our lives through the love of God. It moves us to hope in the face of the impossible; to faith where once we were bereft, to forgiveness where once we were blind. Indeed, there is no message more powerful or compelling in the world than Easter, for this is where God restores us to full communion (eternity) through the Risen One.
Whether we see and believe like the one whom Jesus loved, or go home like Peter, or fail to understand like Mary, or refuse to believe it like Thomas, or fail to recognize him when he walks with us, or proclaim it boldly like the angels, we can know that this journey invites us to encounter a place of trust and peace, a place of hope and freedom, a place of life and love, a place to begin again – and most of all, a place with God.
Please join us this holy season as once again, we gather to celebrate all that God is doing for us. May God bless you and your loved ones this Holy Easter.
Rev Ronda Ploughman
Easter 2010
