Current Pastoral Letter EASTER 2008 Dear Friends in Christ, Getting to Easter is hard work. Those of us especially who work at planning the great three days (Triduum) of Easter know how much there is to do and think about; how much planning and working and pulling things together to get us all through to Easter morning. Those too who joke about setting up their cot in the parish hall over the Easter weekend, know what investment of time and energy is put into the assembling of community from Maundy Thursday through to Easter Sunday. Many who watch us go through such labour wonder why. We don’t look like religious fanatics most of the time. Why can’t we just skip all the other stuff and move right into Easter? Why all the labour, the time spent (read: wasted) in worship and prayer, and all the intensity leading up to the happy feelings, the feasting and springtime of Easter? It is easy to find what these skeptics are looking for. You can have breakfast with the Easter Bunny on the weekends leading up to Easter Day. You can go shopping on Good Friday for all the presents that some marketer has convinced us are necessary for the happy time. You can find Christian communities who will be talking and singing about the triumph and victory of Jesus risen from the grave without much reference to the wounds and the death of the Cross. But who among us that has gone through the dark moments of tragedy or significant loss or devastating change has experienced it as something momentary to be skipped over in order to get to the feeling better part? This is not reality. It does us no earthly good to deny, repress and avoid the hard stuff that life’s transitions are made of. It is only the hard work of embracing the truth and searching for meaning in our context that we are able finally to journey towards the place of newness and wholeness. Easter is not effective without the great holy days that precede it. This is reflected in the very journey that Jesus walked. And it was hard work. On Holy Thursday (Maundy Thursday) Jesus faces the moment of separation from those he loves and bequeaths to them a part of himself to which they might hold in the difficult days ahead: “Do this in remembrance of me.” On Good Friday, Jesus faces the ultimate conflict for humankind as he walks alone through the confrontation with power, sin and mortality: “Father into your hands I commend my spirit.” On Holy Saturday, Christ descends to the deepest and darkest places that swallow human beings. It is the time of intense waiting as we recall the story of faith that has kept us on the journey thus far: “This is our Passover feast…night truly blessed when heaven is wedded to earth and we are reconciled to God.”. Only then does the promise of God break out in newness – new fire, new candles, new water, new clothing, new wine, new bread…new life! “Alleluia, Christ is Risen!” The rhythm of these Great Days are for the rhythm of life itself. That’s why we do it. The work, the time, the waiting, are all worth while, for in them is a gift to us all. I invite each of you to enter again in this Queen of all Seasons as fully as you are able. It is the Gift of God, for the People of God. Blessed Easter! Greg
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