Remember the Reason for the Season!
I’ve heard that one a lot, haven’t you? It comes around twice each year. Every fall, folks fall all over themselves to remind us to remember the reason for the season… And that’s good. I don’t mean to sound as though we SHOULDN’T be reminded to remember the reason. It’s so easy to fall into the traps of thinking that Christmas is about the snow and sleigh rides (never been on one), or the christmas lights and decorations, and most problematic, the gifts. Both the ones we give, and the ones we receive. Perhaps for some of us, it’s more about the ones we receive. We DO need to remember the reason for the season. It’s about Jesus. It’s about Jesus’ coming among us. It’s about the GIFT God gave us, the GIFT of God’s own Son, the GIFT of Jesus, Himself. As an aside, do you get giddy at Christmas thinking about that special gift you got that someone special in your life??? Giggle, perhaps, while wrapping it? Feel like you’re bursting at the seams waiting for Special Someone to open it? Do you wonder if that’s how God felt in those days leading up to the birth of Jesus? I’ll bet it was.
So, too, at Easter, as we dye our eggs, and prepare our easter baskets, and then eat our chocolate bunnies or Peeps (may I just say here, “eeww”?). For us in this overly hyped and marketed era it’s so easy to forget what the real reason for the season is! It’s the bunnies! Of course! Well, of course, it ISN’T! Once again, it’s about Jesus. The real reason for the season is Jesus: the work wrought on our behalf, the suffering, the death, and most importantly, the resurrection. I can never forget that THIS is the reason for the season. That Jesus, God’s free and overly abundant Gift of Love to Humankind, didn’t just come to dwell amongst us and teach us, but to suffer, die and resurrect on our behalf. Think though, for one minute about this little truth: in a way, the Reason for the Season of Easter… is us. Humanity.
We have come now, in our Journey through Lent to a dark place. We have, some of us, given up something that was, at least in theory, special to us. Or we have taken on some new task, some new discipline. Whether giving up or taking on, we did so to help us to remember, to relive, to recall the One who Took Up for us, and Laid Down for us. We attempted to join in a special way, as special as we are capable of, the suffering and the task of Him Who Saves.
And now, we are come to Good Friday. In some way, today we should consider that we recollect today that we, as apostles and disciples of Jesus, are plunged in to darkness. The Light that came into the world on Christmas Day has been extinguished, the Morning Star has set. Do we as Christians look forward to “the third day”, knowing the Sun will Rise, more glorious than before?
Well, yes, of course we do. But, I think if we allow ourselves to do so too much, we lose touch with what TODAY is. TODAY it is dark. TODAY is dark. Can the brilliance of the “third day” mean anything to us, truly, if first we do not embrace what today is? What today means? I’m not sure. I don’t have that answer.
But I think that for a time at least, I shall consider that, and try to put myself in the shoes of those FIRST apostles and disciples. My everything is gone.
And it is dark. A dark no words can describe.
On The Road II 