In case no one has told you, it’s Good Friday, and since I’m bored and have nothing else to say, maybe I’ll talk about that. Call it Kelly’s Church Lesson for the Day (/week/month/whatever).
Let’s start with Lent. This is the 40 days before Easter (not counting Sundays), starting on Ash Wednesday. Lent is a time of preparation, for one to reflect upon one’s own life, one’s spirituality, whatever. I’m not sure why people give up things for Lent – it’s not been part of the faith traditions I grew up with.
Palm Sunday is the week before Easter. It celebrates when Jesus came riding into Jerusalem during the Passover Feast. Everyone thought He was the promised Messiah and was going to come free them from the Roman Empire. It was like a parade, everyone was so excited. Once they figured out it wasn’t going to be a political overthrow, however, their feelings turned.
Maundy Thursday is the celebration of the Passover Feast. It also happens to be the Last Supper, you know, the one that Jesus shared with the disciples right before the whole Good Friday part that I’m getting to. It’s when He washed their feet, and talked cryptically about His death that they didn’t understand, and revealed that He knew Judas was going to betray Him.
After the meal, He went up the Mount of Olives to pray. He brought a few disciples along for a while, but then left them behind, asking them to keep watch. They fell asleep (it was pre-dawn). Obviously, His conversation with God, His Father, was difficult, seeing as how what was about to happen was not exactly a happy thing. This is where, “not My will, but Yours” comes in. And Jesus comes down from the hill, finds the disciples asleep, is obviously disappointed, but then the soldiers come to arrest him. One of the disciples gets a little excited (I think it was Peter) and chops off a soldier’s ear with his sword, but Jesus goes peacefully (and I think He heals the ear, too, but my memory’s a bit fuzzy – if you really care, go look it up in the gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John).
Good Friday, then, begins with the imprisonment of Jesus, the religious trial, where the Jewish leaders decide to turn Him over to the Roman Empire since that’s the only way He’d be executed. Pilate, the judge, finds no wrong but is swayed by the angry crowd. He tries to give them the chance to let Jesus go free, but they choose Barabbas, a hardened criminal, instead. Thus begins the whipping, the beating, the mockery, the disrobing, of Jesus. Finally He’s made to carry His cross to the hill, is nailed on it, and hung up to die.
The sky turns black and it’s this scary few moments in history when God turns His back, which must have been incredibly painful for Jesus, seeing as how they’re Father/Son and also two of the three persons in the Trinity (which, I know, is confusing, seeing as how they’re all God but there’s only one God and not three, and just think of it being like three states of water – liquid, ice, and gas, and maybe that’ll help). Jesus says some things on the cross, everyone cries, and then He dies. He gets buried in a tomb, and there are soldiers placed outside to guard it, so that none of His disciples can come and steal the body and claim that He came back from the dead.
Angels, however, get around this plan, and on Sunday morning when some women come to treat the body with perfumes, the tomb is open and Jesus is gone. And He appears later to the disciples, several times actually, including times when Thomas puts his fingers in the wounds, and times when He seems to defy physics (and just “appear” in locked rooms).
That’s Easter. Jesus hangs around for a while, teaching the disciples, and then goes back up to heaven in a spectacular display. And we’ve been waiting ever since.
But the story doesn’t fully tell all that really happened at Easter, because there’s a lot going on behind the scenes that’s much more difficult to explain and understand, but the basics are this:
- Everybody has sinned. (Romans 3:23)
- Sin separates us from God. (Isaiah 59:2, Romans 6:23)
- The only way to “pay” for sin is with the shedding of blood. (Hebrews 9:22)
- Jesus stepped in and did this on our behalf. (Romans 5:8)
- So we can have a relationship with God. (Romans 8:38-39)
- When God looks at us, He doesn’t see our sin. He sees Jesus. (That’s good, since God can’t look at sin.) (Romans 5:1)
- So we’re always forgiven, for everything, as long as we ask. (Romans 8:1)
- And the promises of heaven and eternity with God, those are all ours for the taking. (Romans 10:9)
It’s a pretty sweet deal, really. Not to make Christianity seem easy, because there are plenty of times when it’s not. Like when you want to be mean but know you should forgive. Or when looking temptation in the face and turning it down. Or when you don’t. Or for people who live in those parts of the world where it’s not OK to be Christian, or even if you hang in certain social circles where it’s not OK (or just some parts of it aren’t cool, like not drinking to excess or having sex outside of marriage or… fill in the blank). There’s these lovely things called grace and forgiveness, however, that make it all possible.
And that is really what we talked about, all those years I taught youth group. Sure, it may not have seemed like it all the time. When we talked about prayer, or fighting with friends, or peer pressure, or having crushes, it may not have seemed like it, but Easter was always present, even if not center stage. And though it definitely hasn’t taken a major role in my life this past year (or, rather, I haven’t been focused on it), it’s still there. While I may be on hiatus, in a bit of a lull, living stagnantly, I never stopped believing any of it, even the fantastical stuff. Trying to figure out “me” outside of church hasn’t meant changing what I believe, but figuring out… what else there is to me besides church. I guess it’s not really all that healthy to define yourself entirely by your career and faith, both of which are so intricately entwined when the career is ministry. So hopefully I’m a bit healthier these days, and know myself a bit better, and see the world… more realistically, less black-and-white. [Editor's note: there's still a lot of black and white, don't get me wrong, because I'm totally about right and wrong. But there's a lot that's fuzzy and gray, too, and I think now I can acknowledge that and make peace with it.]
So maybe I didn’t spend this Lent preparing for Easter. But maybe I spent the whole last year preparing. Not for this Sunday, but… for life after Easter, in the figurative sense. The life that goes on, day after day, after Jesus went back to heaven and the disciples were left with… a lot of confusion and messiness and real life.
So welcome to the mess. As you can tell, it’s pretty much that way here all the time. Brief moments of clarity and order, that are usually overtaken by… my inability to put thoughts into complete sentences that others understand.
