Resurrection is Messy
I grew up within a church tradition that preferred “Celebration of Life Services” in place of “Funeral Services” following a loss of a loved one. This was profoundly odd to me growing up, because the lack of sadness being expressed outwardly was not in alignment with the sadness I was experiencing inwardly. This was my first context for my awareness of awkwardness in feeling sad, and not really knowing what to do with it.
This became vividly clear for me when I attended the Celebration of Life for a childhood friend who lost his life tragically to addiction. I was overwhelmed by the sadness I was feeling for losing him, the shame I was feeling for not doing more or being more present in his life, the anger I was feeling at the circumstances contributing to his addictive compulsions, and the loneliness I was feeling that no one around me seemed to be expressly feeling the same. I experienced similar emotions just a few weeks ago on what should have been my friend’s 40th birthday, a milestone I always imagined we would share together.
Death is excruciatingly painful, and we don’t always know what to do with that, do we?
This week is Holy Week, and as I’ve grown older the movements of the Lenten Season as historically embraced by the Church have been a welcomed invitation to my soul to enter into the messiness of it all! From contemplating our mortality on Ash Wednesday reminding me of my need for Jesus to fasting reminding me that what my soul craves more than anything is to trust in fullness the triune God, and the ways that I so often turn towards dependence on other things to satisfy that ultimate desire.
Each day, each gathering an invitation to enter into the life, death and resurrection of Jesus through embodied practices, has been a deep place of encouragement to my soul and freedom for my soul to receive the burden and the beauty of the human experience, and all of the emotion that accompanies it.
Good Friday is messy, figuratively and literally. How could something so tragic be so good? A body being beaten and broken, blood being shed. Not just any body, flesh and blood, God in a body. The sadness, the hurt, the loneliness. All familiar for those who have experienced life for any length of time. I often feel the internal and external pressures to rush to the joy and gladness of Easter, the celebration of Resurrection. This body of Jesus, once dead and buried in a tomb walking out of that same tomb, conquering death triumphantly. It certainly is a miraculous and spectacular event, one worthy of our celebration!
Before we rush to that, could we enter into the disorientation of death?
Imagine, being the mother, the brother, the close personal friend of Jesus. All the promises, all the memories, all the dreams and hopes for the future life together, gone in a few bloody moments.
Waiting, wondering, doubting that His words may not be true, that He may not be who He says that He is. A tension that may sound and feel eerily and painfully familiar, as many things haven’t turned out the way we thought or hoped they would. Imagine waiting on Saturday to see if what Jesus had promised would come true. Would He rise from the dead, like He said?
There is no resurrection without death.
All resurrection travels the lonely, and painful road of death. This is good news, on a cosmic level, and good news for you on a personal level. The death, burial and resurrection is the surest hope that our defeats, the diminishments of our dreams, the losses and limitations we experience in life will not have the final word. Jesus knows the brokenness of these realities, enters in, and is bringing forth beauty.
No matter the specifics of the death, and the loss that accompanies it, it’s painful, it’s messy, it’s lonely. Whether this season is a reminder of the death of a marriage, a child, a family member, a dream, a friendship, or any number of other “deaths” we encounter on the journey of humanity, know that God brings His most beautiful of beauty from the darkest of our darkness.
When all hope seems lost, the resurrection of Jesus is our vivid and tangible reminder that God is not done, He is working, and He will bring goodness and beauty from our deaths and disappointments. It may not look the way that we thought it would look, and may not come when we thought it would come, but He is trustworthy to come through on His promises and to finish the work that He has begun within you!
How might you receive His invitation to trust His process of death & resurrection in your life today?
He knows every hurt, He hears every cry, He sees every wrong. He holds, He loves. He knows.
Wait on the Lord, welcome the mess, watch for the resurrection!
Submitted by: Matthew Korte