...and so it begins, again!

It’s on Good Friday in the congregation I’m serving, that all of our attention turns toward Easter morning.  The Lilies and tulips get delivered on Thursday—when it’s actually hard to find a hiding-place in the Church building that won’t make it smell like Easter morning for Maundy Thursday worship, or Good Friday observances in the years we’ve hosted the community service. 

And lo!  This year, before Jesus was ever entombed at sundown on Friday (to beat Sabbath observance), we were hard at work shifting our liturgical gears and worship space from Lent to Easter.  It happened as some of us returned from the Community Good Friday Service—because it’s the last chance to get things in order at church before the “weekend” so everything is set for when we arrive on Sunday morning.  By 5pm this Good Friday our sanctuary was already Easter-perfect! 

So if you walked into our sanctuary this Friday evening, you’d have been amazed at what you say—just as the gospel story describes Peter at the tomb on Easter morning!  It smells like Easter in the Church!  There’s absolutely no stench of death or any reminders.  There’s “no waiting.”  You can now fast-forward past the tomb.  We’ve gotten rid of the evidence of any pre-Easter parties; and with a deep breath and a hush falling on Havertown for the long Easter weekend…, we’re ready!  Way ahead of schedule! 

Maybe it’s like this where you are, too. 

Actually, no one really knows “when…” it happens.  “It” being God raising Jesus from the dead.  Tradition and the Bible say it was Sunday morning that Jesus was suddenly raised; but that’s only and because that’s when the empty tomb was discovered.  The Bible reminds us, Jesus says, “in three days” he would rise again.  But three days—wouldn’t that push us on toward Monday, rather than Sunday?  As three-days-worth of time has always been 72 hours, hasn’t it? 

Alas, before I get caught up with Dr. Who in the minutia of time, we remember that it’s “sometime”—between the tomb being closed and when the women arrive to the tomb on the first day—post Sabbath—a Sunday.  “Sometime” in there—could be anytime in there--God pulls the best Star Trek “beam me up” moment and yanks Jesus miraculously from the jaws of death, pulling him out of the tomb and releasing the world from the rule of death, and sin—and a host of other things. 

And because that “sometime” could be “anytime” between Jesus dying and rising, YES—even on Good Friday—for me it begins, again!  I start looking for the world for which Jesus gave his life! 

On this Good Friday, it was the gift of a moving community Good Friday service that included prayers of solidarity with Middle Eastern Christians, and prayers for faithful people around the world, hosted by the Armenian UCC congregation in our community. 

On this Good Friday, it was seeing the woman who earlier in the week had stopped me in the grocery store to ask if I was a local clergyperson, wanting to know the details about today’s service.  

On this Good Friday, it was an unusual number of Philly drivers who were kind and unusually courteous toward me and other pedestrians as I walked home from the community Good Friday service. 

On this Good Friday, it was thinking excitedly about an Easter-world to which Jesus and we are working to give birth—in ourselves, and the people around us. 

On this Good Friday, it was the Facebook post of a colleague who was bemoaning the usual reference to “C & E Christians” (those who attend regularly but only at Christmas services and Easter services) inviting Church leaders to be brave and consider that maybe it’s not what we do in Sunday morning worship that inspires people, but that they find hope and help in the stories of incarnation and resurrection.  Hmmm.   

On this Good Friday, it was gratitude—for God so loved the world—and for God still loving the world.  And maybe I and the people I know and love can still make a difference in the world—in which we must live with the realities of terrorism manifested in violent attacks, armed conflict, and a destructive political process.  But what a world in which to witness the love of God in Jesus Christ! 

So on Good Friday it always seems to happen to me that I witness glimpses of Easter-come-early—the gifts of a world Jesus gave his life to save. 

So…, what are you doing this weekend to prepare yourself to give birth to a world that Jesus gave his life to save? 

What must you make ready, so that come Easter Sunday morning, you’re busting out of church to raise up the world Jesus gave his life to save? 

© Rev. David Stipp-Bethune; Teaching Elder and Pastor, The Presbyterian Church of Llanerch, Havertown, Pennsylvania