Disciples, Apostles, and Saints!
I was preparing for seminary when the film The Passion of the Christ was released. The film brought a centuries-long theological conversation to the public in a new way. Can we tell the story of the Crucifixion without also telling the story of the Resurrection?
Technically, yes. But dare we? That is the actual question.
There is also a way that we do the opposite: telling the story of Resurrection without crucifying Jesus. Having our Easter without our Good Friday. This is also a problem.
We are Easter people because we know Good Friday. We are a people of resurrection after death. But to get there, we have to experience the death!
As much as we might long to keep the hardship and struggle and pain away from ourselves; to live as people who know none of that; we are people who know love precisely because we know what it is like to live its opposite.
As we gather to experience both the Crucifixion of Jesus and his Resurrection, may we be filled with the message of love, of hope, of new life that embodies our lives. Not only in our times of true joy, but also in intense sorrow. May we know the love we long for. And let that love shine out into a world that longs for such grace as the kind we can give.
With love,
Drew