A Word from Laura: This Side of Resurrection
A mentor of mine posted recently, “This year, if you’re not Ukrainian, you don’t get to talk about Easter.”
Yes, he may have a tendency to overstate things. I don’t know if he considered how many non-Ukrainians would be in church this Sunday, although knowing him, that was probably the point. If I were trying to make his point, I would have added peoples from around the world whose lives and communities have been decimated by unjust violence, war and death.
His point was that unless we have witnessed the violent end of all we know and love, we are not yet ready for the Resurrection. Without seeing first-hand the impact of suffering, death and all the death-dealing aspects of our world, we simply don’t know how to appreciate what it means for God to overcome it all. We can’t imagine the new life, because we haven’t been brought to a place beyond which we can’t imagine.
I appreciate my friend’s point. I would have said it differently, but he is wise, and I want to make sure you benefit from his wisdom and its truth.
Not because I am morbid, but because without stopping to consider and reflect on the crassness of the cross and the gravity of the grave, we can miss God at work in the deathly places in our own lives and world. We can try to avoid the painful, messy parts to get to the good stuff and altogether miss the point of the good stuff – the new life of Resurrection.
This weekend of Good Friday and Holy Saturday, as you turn on your news media and see pictures of situations beyond your imagining, or as you care for someone who is suffering, or perhaps as you wonder how you will survive a difficult struggle in your own life, I hope you will pause for a moment and wonder what part of Christ’s own journey your moment resembles. Before we get to Easter, the empty cross, imagine how your own moment or experience is cross-shaped, and where your experience resonates with Jesus’ own suffering.
On the cover of the Post this week, I saw medics carrying a body of what looked like a barely living child out of a Ukrainian hospital. All I could see was a pietà, the art form in which Mary holds the lifeless body of Jesus taken down from the cross. We don’t have to look far to see the suffering, and it’s literally excruciating.
This Good Friday and Holy Saturday, may we remember and stand with all those in the midst of suffering. May we have the courage to pray with them and for them, even as they may be ourselves. May we find ways to bear witness, even if we are not Ukrainian, even if “our people” have not been systematically tortured, killed, or oppressed. May we all be looking for Resurrection.
Through the darkest night, towards the light that awaits,
Laura