This week we enter Easter.
As years pass, the more Easter comes central to the spiritual life. Why is that?
First, the Easter story fills with humans amid the human condition. Peter the denier, Thomas the doubter, Judas the betrayer. Add in all the rest of the crew, most of whom fled in fear at least in parts of the story, and we read a rather unadorned view of the human condition. And God loves us regardless.
Secondly, there is a picture of God, of Jesus, that is almost beyond compelling. Faced with violence, vengeance, anger, we see a model of peace, a model of forgiveness, and a model of unimageable fortitude that definitively says in the face of pain, “It stops here. It stops now.”
And third, it captures the base rhythm of life – a rhythm of death, waiting, and then at last resurrection. While some of us face this in very real, physical ways, all of us face it in our relationships, in change, in growth. The old dies. There follows a slow period of anxious waiting. And then the miracle.
So, what is the key to entering Easter?
The key is simply this … allow the transformative, disruptive love of the Easter story to color your life for the next 3 weeks.
Jesus in this story did not call on the miraculous. He called on the resilient. He called on the loving. He called on the best part of Divinity and the best parts of Humanity.
Let’s live that together friends.
