Resurrection does not erase the pain of our shattered plans and life’s difficult unknowing. Resurrection does not undo what has been done. Yet, when we refuse to sanitize the context of Christ’s rising from the dead, we open ourselves to another hope that is revealed in it.
Christ’s resurrection reveals that a transformation of our suffering and uncertainty awaits us. And like Jesus’s first followers, it is a transformation far beyond what we can fathom—whether at our best or at our most undone. We do not know when it will come, or what it will look like. We do not, in fact, know how this will end. But we profess that, by the grace of God, our unraveled lives will be transformed in glory.
It is transformation, not reversal or erasure, that awaits us this Holy Week. And if this is so, then our movement toward Easter morning should not be a movement away from the uncertainties and sorrows of our world. If resurrection is, indeed, a mysterious gathering up and transformation of them all, then we should spend these days present to the disappointments, tragedies, and uncertainties of our lives. Let us gather them up and bring them to the cross in hope of whatever it is that is to come.
--Jessica Coblenz
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