It is Holy Week. On these days leading up to Easter, Christian communities gather to hear about Jesus eating a final meal with his friends and his startling arrest. We recall his brutal beating and makeshift trial. We remember a denial by the charcoal fire and the crowds screaming “Crucify him!” We try to insulate ourselves from the bizarre parade to the execution hill beyond the city walls and the violence incited by fear and hatred which took his life.
I wish that all of the gruesome events of these solemn days were sequestered in the past, but unfortunately our embrace of sin continues to propel similar occurrences right into our days and newsfeeds. Greed, selfishness, and betrayal runs rampant. Hate and revenge dismantles friendships and allegiances. The struggle to maintain power and cling to self-preservation distorts otherwise clear-headed thinking. Manipulation and judgment rooted in fear continue to be lived out in real time right in front of us.
Recently, three historically black churches were deliberately torched in Louisiana. Chaos reigns at our southern border. Democrats and Republicans point fingers and blame one another as they dig in their heels. Military budgets swell as countries fortress themselves for the future. Children continue to go to bed hungry. I write this following a day in court when a murderer was given the maximum sentence for stalking and killing one of our own.
Like the disciples, we are surrounded by periods of darkness and waiting and wondering, but we live as people of Hope who wait for what is promised. Death doesn’t have the last word. Pain and suffering isn’t the end of the story. Jesus bursts into our presence as the one who once was dead, but now is alive.
Clinging to the cross and empty tomb!
Pastor Lowell Michelson