Lent is a time to be honest with God about our weaknesses and our need of His strength. So, it is a serious time.
Easter, though, is a time of hope – so a joyful time. But it is a hope not based on a fairytale where everything comes right without a cost. That is just escapism. Rather it is a hope based on the reality we see both in our own lives and in the world round about us.
One of the stories after the resurrection is about when the disciples other than Thomas meet Jesus. They tell Thomas who doesn’t believe it. Jesus meets Thomas later and tells him to put his hand in Jesus’ side where he was wounded with a spear at the crucifixion – and Thomas also sees his hands where the nails had driven through. The terrible journey Jesus went through to death on a cross, is part of Jesus’ risen appearance. As I say: it is no fairytale.
Which is why it is good news (which is the deepest meaning of the word Gospel). The joy of Easter is not based on escapism: it faces the world – with its pain and sadly often war and violence and hatreds – full on. The Christian Easter message is that Jesus faced all those awful things, but they could not defeat him. The love he showed, proclaimed and taught – the infinite love of a loving God – is not defeated by all the real pain and hard things we see round about us. That faith and belief has kept literally millions and millions of people going even when life is very hard, as it can be.
I often like to look up the lives of some of the hymn writers. It amazes me how much we have to learn from them. One is a Presbyterian minister, George Matheson, who lived from 1846 to the early C20th. He is known now particularly for one hymn, slightly Victorian in its tone, with the first line “O love that wilt not let me go”. He went blind in his early twenties and his fiancé, on seeing this, broke of their engagement saying she could not cope. He never married.
In the hymn there is a line referring to his blindness “I yield my flickering torch to thee”. The next verse combines what I have tried to refer to in this Easter article – our hope and joy is not in avoidance of pain, but in being held through it:
O joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
and feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.
So, wishing you all simply “Happy Easter” does not do justice to what it is really about: hope and joy that, while indeed there is pain in our world, God’s love is stronger than all things. Which is why Mother Julian of Norwich, a mystic who lived in an age of much suffering, is known for a beautiful and simple phrase: “All is well, all manner of things shall be well”.
Peter