Easter Reflection for Holy Week

It's the middle of Holy Week and the end of a semester. As a pastor and graduate student, that means that I feel like I don't have time to sleep (let alone blog!).

As I've been reading through the gospel narratives of Jesus' passion, death, and resurrection in preparation for my church's holy week services, I have been filled with this strange mixture of sadness and hope. Maybe it's not so strange, when you consider that both sadness and hope are exactly what the story should convey to us. But in most years, I don't dwell long enough on the sadness before I move on to Easter morning, the empty tomb, and the great hope we have in Christ resurrected.

This year is different. I don't know why, exactly. But I suspect that my thinking about society's larger economic woes is combining with some of my own personal struggles to be more faithful in a way that is making me dwell more on the sad aspects of a world broken by sin and alienation. I got my new copy of Newsweek this afternoon, and the cover story is an article by Jon Meacham on the decline of "Christian America." I am very leery of mixing fidelity to God and fidelity to country, but from my scan of the article it's not all about the decline of the highly politicized Religious Right. It is also about the decline of the Christian faith in our culture in general, an argument that is backed up by some statistical evidence.

The church is in a tough spot right now. We're all in a tough spot. So I thank God for the promise of Easter, because we need to hear its message now more than ever. I have an Easter column in the United Methodist Reporter this week, which I wrote both to help the church and help myself.