Sisters and Brothers in Christ

I need Holy Week. Here I sit in my tomb of self-pity or pride or greed or lust and I need to die: I need Holy Week. Throughout Lent Jesus has been leading us to this time, to this dying. So, with Thomas’ exasperation I can say, "Let us go to Jerusalem as well that we might die with him" or I can simply blow it off and remain in my nice, dark comfortable tomb.

Wait a minute, isn’t this backwards? I mean if Jesus is leading us to our deaths in Jerusalem how can I already be in a tomb? Jesus is such a trickster! He really isn’t leading us to Jerusalem to die. He is taking us where we can see the death that already grips me and you in our slumber of denial: the egoism of self-pity or self-aggrandizement. Like kicking the tire on a used car Jesus kicks at our tombs and simply says, "See?"

You ever been walking through an old house and got a face full of cobwebs? Not a very pleasant experience is it? Yet here is Jesus wanting us to stir about in our tombs of despair or pride knocking over old bones and crawling through cobwebs of deceit and sin. Forget this! Just give me that happy happy joy joy feeling of Easter! Give me that religious high that pushes me deeper into the death denial is.

Your religion and mine can do one of two things: it can be a crutch to protect us from those deep fears that freeze the soul and binds the heart or it can empower us to rise from those nefarious tombs and walk among living, realized human beings. Such would be the joy of Jesus to see us taking bold steps into the human being God called and created us to be.

Ken in his sermon this past Sunday said, "There can be no Easter without Lent." Indeed, and without Holy Week and the dredging and acknowledgment of the tombs that I am in now then Easter is really just for colored eggs and bunnies.

I guess it comes down to a choice of having a religion based on Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny or a religion following the Crucified One to acceptance of the tombs where you and I lie and responding to that commanding voice that says, "Child of God, I say to you – arise!"

Joel t