“Death remains an intruder in the human story; it’s a scourge, a curse, the last enemy. Christians believe the capacity to face it in hope flows directly from the events of the first Easter weekend and from the abandonment experienced then.
”˜My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’: the words of Jesus from the cross reveal a depth of spiritual torment we can barely conceive: in his hour of most acute agony, he reaches out for his Father, and he’s not there: he’s by himself.
And that sense of abandonment crushed his followers as well, left them confused, bewildered. It’s why the day after Good Friday is always a strange one: a limbo day between the dark horror, and the dazzling light yet to dawn: God in the grave, the source of all life in the world of the dead.
It’s supremely, it seems to me, a day for those perplexed by uncertainty, anxious about health, work, family, faith, the world, and feeling overwhelmingly lonely.
The Christian faith affirms that Jesus tasted the extreme of abandonment precisely so that we need not; except, that is, the serene abandonment which assures us that even in the greatest traumas, God hold us firmly, and his death-defying purposes are always loving ones.”
How timely! Thanks for this, Kendall.