This weekend, I discovered the answer to wandering aimlessly through the darkness of Life: TURN ON THE LIGHT!
For too long, I’ve been observing Easter weekend the same manner: guilty and depressed on Good Friday, numb to the world on Saturday, and on Sunday all dressed up in spring colors with a smile plastered prominently on my face. I expressed and felt just what I was supposed to.
Following the same routine. Going through all the motions.
But this year, I found the light switch. Truth transformed tradition.
In the light of Good Friday services, the events of the Crucifixion and Resurrection shined for what they really are, not historical religious events, but glorious manifestations of God’s grace and love.
Before you cringe at my choice of nouns in that last statement, I realize that grace and love sound like Christian-ese. At any other time, I would agree with that characterization. However, I understand now understand why those words are so prominent in the Christian tradition. Easter morning only reinforced their appropriateness and intensified the awe and wonder of Friday night.
Since this weekend, seven impressions that originally formed while feeling my way through the darkness of a finite human brain solidified into shining reality:
1. First, the glory of the cross is not Jesus's death; it's His self-sacrificial love. For the first time, I understood––not with head-knowledge, but with heart-knowledge––WHY the Crucifixion took place. I always knew Christ died for me, but I thought He did it out of duty or compulsion. Instead, I now understood that His reason was to show the earth how much He loves us. No literary description or cinematic rendition can come close to capturing the horror Jesus experienced...OR the love that motivated Him to endure it.
2. The cross does not represent our guilt; it represents our freedom. As stated above, I've always been good at Good Friday, but looking beyond the gore and misery of the Crucifixion to marvel of Christ’s love revealed that besides sin being erased, so too was the guilt that accompanies it. Because of the cross, there is no longer any need to dwell on the wrongs of the past; rather, the opportunities of the now abound.
3. Jesus did not come to condemn; He came to rescue. For too long, the "righteous" have harangued "the sinners" with the specious claim "Because God hates what you do, He will destroy you and your evil." The speakers ignore the question, "Why then did Jesus die?" God's judgement and anger could have eradicated sinful mankind in the blink of an eye. Instead, He became a vulnerable human. On Good Friday, He bore our sins and suffered death for all of us. No hint of condemnation or vengeance. Just mercy. Mercy that rescues us from ourselves.
4. Jesus did not come to institute a new religion; He came to renew a relationship. These first three reflections have fortified my belief that religion separates us from God more than it brings us closer to Him. Rules and ritual disguise the truth that Jesus stated when He encapsulated the whole of Jewish law into two simple commandments: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength....Love your neighbor as yourself." His crucifixion and resurrection meant to reestablish the affinity between God and man that existed before the Fall. Which brings us to the most essential truth of his ministry.
5. Jesus did not come to change our behavior; he came to change our hearts. As stated above, Jesus did not bring more ritual, liturgy, and commandments. He reduced our relationship with Him to one thing: loving. No ceremonies. No ritual sacrifices. No enticement of reward. No threat of punishment. Just unending, matchless love.
6. For every Good Friday (suffering), there is an Easter (resurrection). On Easter Sunday, our pastor reminded us of this Resurrection Principle: Life will bring trials and pain, try as we may to avoid them. But like Jesus, God will raise us above them. He does not impose anguish on us, but He can and will lift us out of the ashes, recreating us stronger, victorious, perfected.
7. Jesus’s resurrection was not magical. It was mighty. It was transformational. It was God being God. Those who doubt the existence of God often point to the Resurrection story as magical thinking and evidence of the gullibility of Christians. However, the power that can create a universe can also overcome any limitations of that universe. Yes, there is Natural Law, but the very existence of Natural Law is unnatural. It only exists at the discretion of the originating power which created it.
As life-altering as reflection can be, the previous ideas do not form the entirety of a new belief system, but they do provide light, light to step confidently and deeper into a relationship with the Creator. When one can see, there is so much more to explore and learn.
You just have to flip the switch.
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