I woke up this Easter morning thinking about the grueling experience of life the people closest to Jesus of Nazareth must have had following his arrest in the garden of Gethsemane, the court appearances and torture that followed, and the final slow death from exposure to the elements, excruciating pain, mortal wounds, loss of blood, and dyspnea.
Witnessing these happen to disconnected individuals can markedly affect people’s minds and emotions. Even more so when the individual has been closely connected to observers.
It wasn’t Jesus alone who suffered on Good Friday. His friends did too, and their suffering might have been just as intense, at least psychologically.
That suffering continued till the third day after Jesus’ death, when a few of them, both women and men dared to visit his tomb hoping for the impossible. They were rewarded for their hope. THE TOMB WAS EMPTY!
An empty tomb raised their expectations. But without a body they were still quiet and unsure. Soon the risen Christ made an appearance and spoke to them.
That experience changed everything for the despondent handful disciples of Christ who were after Jesus’ death hiding from a mammoth political system and a culture that was hostile to him as well as them.
From a defeated, shy, guilt-ridden, and fear-stricken small group they transformed themselves into a movement which in three hundred years made the head of the Empire that had sanctioned the death of their leader bow his knee to the leader and embrace the path he showed. The Roman Empire became Christian and over time Christianity became the world’s leading religion.
The Easter story has a lesson for humans regardless of religious affinities. It shows that life’s challenges can be met in different ways bearing different results.
To begin with, there is the reminder that life can get very dark very soon and can make ordinary, well living people fail in every way.
But in the Easter narrative there is the clear indication that even in life’s darkest moments the mind can propel one to positive anticipation which could open doors unimagined and unexpected.
Most challenges in life are usually overcome by personal resolve and initiative.
But there could come certain times in the lives at least of some individuals in which the darkness is too overwhelming and impossible to conquer.
It is at such times that faith often is necessary. To look to a source of energy beyond the realms of material reality - to that Source from where the mysteries of life originate and to seek help might be the means, the only means for some, of a new beginning and a remarkable transformation.
It happened to a small, defeated community on Easter Sunday. That community has claimed in every one of twenty generations till now that the same remarkable transformation has happened and continues to happen in individual lives that tap the energies of that life giving Source.
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