Holy Week to Easter

Published in the Brechin Advertiser 28 March 2013

So we are, well into Holy Week things are moving fast now. We have enjoyed the thought of the triumphal entry and heard, I hope, the voices crying Hosanna to Jesus riding into Jerusalem on that Palm Sunday so long ago. Now moving through the week we look ahead to the Last Supper and then the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prayed asking if perhaps the ‘Cup’ could be passed over, yet with the resounding “not my will but thine”. Then the betrayal of Judas to the rulers and then we can hear the cries of the people as they shout out “Crucify Him”... It is perhaps Friday and the sound of the hammer striking the nails as they pierce the flesh of Jesus to nail Him to the cross that is then hoisted up to leave Christ hanging between Heaven and earth as an atonement for the sin of mankind.

Oh the darkness, the agony, the suffering, the heartbreak of the followers and disciples, how Mary the Mother of Jesus must have hurt and wept as she remembered the days from his birth a mere 33 years before to the tragic day before her... Oh, but as the old black preacher shouted out in his sermon:  “IT’S FRIDAY BUT SUNDAY IS COMING!”

So there it is, the disciples hidden away for fear, the body of Jesus, the one they thought was the Saviour, the Messiah buried in the tomb, wrapped up like a mummy and not a chance there was a future... The ladies headed to the tomb wondering how they were going to get in the tomb with the stone and the guards in the way, yet prepared to finish the job of embalming the body that had been so hastily and improperly buried on that Friday before the Sabbath.

So the big questions unanswered, the grave sealed, the doubt in the way—yet arriving at the tomb it is not at all what they expected. The grave was open, the stone rolled away. The guards gone and instead angels asking: Why are you seeking the living among the dead? He is NOT HERE HE IS RISEN AS HE SAID.

Doom turned to Joy. Sadness turned to Happiness. Despair turned to Hope. As the Apostle Paul said: “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death…”

Glory in Hope of the resurrection and have a very Happy Easter,

Rev. Jon Bergen