“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves…Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
Rainer Marie Rilke, poet
Drop the Cadbury’s!
It’s been a long journey through the darkness of Lent and at last we are able to glimpse the breaking of Easter dawn. The end is in sight, but we’re not there yet.
This is a week to color eggs, finish putting up decorations and attempt to keep the family out of the Easter candy. But, it’s not Easter yet. We’re close, but we have to ride the Holy Week roller coaster first.
These next few days are some of the most intense days of the Christian year. It’s like being on an emotional roller coaster, where we ascend to the highest highs and then suddenly plunge to the lowest lows. Take Thursday, for instance. There is the high of the Last Supper and the low a few hours later of Jesus’ arrest and abandonment by his friends. Good Friday brings us Jesus’ death on the cross, a death which looks like a defeat to be mourned, but which is actually a victory to be celebrated.
And then there’s the silence of Holy Saturday, when all of creation seems to hold its breath, waiting to see if God’s promises of life and redemption are going to come true.
We know how this is going to end. With the benefit of time we know the tomb will be empty on Sunday morning. Two thousand years ago, the disciples did not. Yes, Jesus told them about his death and resurrection, but either they didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand. They had just come from the triumphal celebration of Palm Sunday when Jesus was hailed as king and Messiah; they didn’t want to hear that this Messiah would have to die and be raised to life.
The disciples went through the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, all in the course of one week. And it left them, frankly, confused and terrified. What if Jesus hadn’t been the Messiah after all? Had they wasted their time following him? Would they share his fate – death on a cross? The week ends with more questions than answers.
Humans, most humans anyway, like certainty. We prefer to have our questions answered, rather than living with the tension of the unknown. A black and white world is much easier to navigate than a world filled with overlapping shades of gray. Unfortunately, we live in a gray and uncertain world. Definitive answers are not always easy to come by.
Today, we live in unsettled (and unsettling) times. Questions abound. It is tempting to look to the past and think things were better 200 years ago, 100 years ago, 50 years ago, whatever. No, they weren’t. War, disease, hunger, poverty, bigotry, injustice and their friends have always been with us. Problems just seem worse while you’re experiencing them. Amid the darkness of suffering it can be difficult to make out the light of God’s presence or hear the comforting sound of God’s voice.
But, we know how this is going to end.
Victory has already been won. That was accomplished 2,000 years ago with Jesus’ death and resurrection. And no matter how uncertain things may seem, no matter how alone we may feel, we have the same promise that Jesus gave to his disciples:
“Remember I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
We are not alone. God is not absent; nor is God silent. Even in the midst of our worst experiences, God is with us, walking beside us, offering to transform our pain just as God transformed Jesus’ death into life for humankind.
Still, we ask why. Why is there so much pain in the world? Why did Jesus have to suffer and die? Wasn’t there another way?
I used to ask my grandfather these same questions (and many, many more). He would always answer the same way: We’ll know some day. In the meantime, remember that God is in control, not us.
This week I encourage you to embrace the uncertainty. Don’t wait for all of your questions to be answered. Get in the front car of the roller coaster, experience the ups and downs as if for the first time. Take your hands off the safety bar and put your arms in the air. Trust in the love of God. We’re almost there.
Grace and peace,
Mark
Divine Overtones 