The story of Easter, whether Christian or not is a story of suffering and meaning making. When Jesus died, when any of us die to some part of our life that is no longer, our world is interrupted. His disciples, his followers, the women who were so much a part of his life were shocked, bereft and lost. How do we make sense of his suffering, our own suffering, how is it possible to be re-born in this life again?
I think the real answer to that question is how we look at suffering itself. Suffering in and of itself is never good. This is what the church had so tragically wrong; there is no redemption in suffering. But suffering’s interruption can teach. Not always for the sufferer but those of us who respond to that suffering with compassion. “To live the moments we have and not grieve the moments we lack” as the poet Gilbert Friend Jones put it.
What was reborn wasn’t so much a physical Jesus as a different reason to go on with life in spite of the suffering. When tragedy strikes us, when our life is interrupted, we are forced to come down off the cross of fear, climb out of the tomb of despair and face the new reality
With Grace and Grit, John
