Hope Resides Between Bad Friday & Easter Sunday

I remember vividly the confusion I experienced when half my sophomore dorm headed home for Easter. Why were they heading home? Didn’t they want to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection with their college community? 

I preferred to stay at college with my faith community. At the University chaplain’s office I discovered my spiritual home. That Holy Week we gathered on Thursday for a candlelit meal and communion as the chaplain read the story of Jesus’ final meal with his disciples. The following day we shared in an ecumenical stations of the cross service in town. Easter morning there was a town-wide sunrise service and then a traditional Easter service later on campus.  As the trumpets sounded and the massive chapel organ played “Christ the Lord is Risen Today,” I was sure anyone sleeping would be roused from their slumber. 

While I was growing up, at best my family made it to Easter. If they were feeling particularly religious we might make it to Palm Sunday too. So, I didn’t want to return home and miss the journey with my faith community through Maundy Thursday, Bad Friday, Holy Saturday, and Resurrection Sunday. I wanted the full experience, and I got it. And that first Holy Week transformed my understanding of Easter.

At the age of 19, my definition of Easter did not include family brunch or daffodils (growing up in Buffalo I already knew daffodils were not an Easter thing) or dyed eggs or the Easter ham, and certainly not stories of bunnies or baby chicks. Instead, my newfound understanding was about a hope beyond imagining. This hope was not shallow or anemic, like a childhood wish, but a profound, shake you to the bones, turn the world upside down hope. It was a hope anchored solidly between Bad Friday and Easter Sunday. It acknowledge Bad Friday yet celebrated Easter Sunday.

Some people would prefer to overlook Bad Friday and go straight to the good stuff, but not Joseph T. Nolan:

                Nobody warns, “So many shopping days to Easter!”
                No costly gifts, no monetary loss.
                Easter seems too easy.
                It is--if you forget about the cross. 

In my entire childhood upbring I never heard Easter spoken of in relation to the cross. Instead, if anything Easter came swiftly on the tails of crosses made of Palms. They were child-fashioned crosses--no nails, no crown of thorns. I may have been protected from the gruesome reality of the cross, but as a result Easter seemed of no more consequence than Valentine’s Day.