Between night and day

After yesterday's dark post, I wondered if there could be an Easter Morning response. I thought it might come to me at our Easter service, and it did.

It's the difference between night and day, like nothing has changed but everything has changed. It's the same world and the same me living in it, but now there is the kind of light that no one, not even death, can put out.

Christ is risen.
God raised Him.
There is nothing we can do.

What if Easter Sunday never comes?

Most of the messages I've heard from Christian leaders this Easter relate to the hope that Easter brings. That's OK for them, but for some reason it's not resonating with me this Easter. It feels like they are skipping from A to C without going through B.

Spoilers.

How can you appreciate the glory of C without the desolation of B?

As far as the unfolding story of Holy Week goes, we're currently at B, the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. I wonder how they felt on that first Easter Saturday? They'd just seen their Messiah crucified. What next? They didn't know what tomorrow would bring. Just like us.

It was a Sabbath, a day of rest and worship, yet it must have felt strangely empty and void without the presence of Jesus, in whom they had placed their faith.

If God was going to do something, why the wait? As I mused yesterday, perhaps it was to allow us to come to terms with the consequences of our actions. And they were our actions -  it wasn't Judas who killed Jesus, or the Jews, or the Romans, or the disciples. All of them failed in some way, but they personified our failures - they were our representatives. If we had been there, would things have happened differently? I think not. We would have found ourselves somewhere in the narrative accusing, betraying, abusing, running away or ignoring what was going on.

So, in the spirit of the day after Good Friday and not knowing what Sunday would bring, let me offer the following reflection as a kind of in-the-moment alternative to the affirmative messages of hope you might otherwise hear.

God is dead.
We murdered Him.
There is nothing we can do.

Between Good Friday and Easter Sunday

At our Good Friday morning service, I found myself thinking through the narrative. Can we put out the Light of God? Evidently, yes. What happens when we do? In a word, darkness. Also chaos and death, thuggery and betrayal, undone-ness and lost-ness. In another word, Hell. Will God allow it to remain that way? Sunday hasn't come yet. Time to reflect on the gravity of our murder of God.