'Is everything sad going to become untrue?' - Sam Gamgee to Gandalf, Lord of the Rings (Tolkein). Justin Taylor gives just a few lines to ponder, over Between Two Worlds. [Worth reading & pondering.]
Which also goes some way to explain why I can never conjure up despondent sadness for Good Friday, because that first Easter Sunday not only was the great gong sounding the candance of God's plan; it actually made Friday good.
Dan Blanche summarised it this Easter, too:
To treat Easter as a myth is to see the passage from Good Friday to Easter Sunday as a sort of re-enactment. In my case, it meant trying to find the right emotional response for each day: remorse passing into grief passing into joy. I suppose acting as if my participation made it real.
Easter is history. It happened once and for all. So, this weekend I will be remembering and celebrating, not re-enacting.
We always remember the cross from this side of the resurrection. Of course that doesn't stop us engaging with different emotions as we remember different events, but it all happens within the bracket of 'Christ is risen', and therefore is not really mourning...
As better messengers said, 'Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, when he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.'
After all, even the act of remembrance which Jesus instituted, was a forward-looking one: we proclaim his death until he comes again.
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