Getting Through the Darkness

by General Presbyter Melana Scruggs

This coming week is the holiest week of the church year, beginning with a triumphant march into Jerusalem and ending with the joyous overturning of sin and death. We love waving palms and singing hosanna! It is our deepest joy to sing that Christ is Risen! It is the in-between parts we would rather avoid. Yet it is the dark places that prepare us for the joy of the Resurrection.

Shirley Guthrie was my theology professor at Columbia Seminary and he always said that describing our faith is a balancing act. We have to say two things that seem contradictory to come close to describing it adequately. We have to say that Jesus was fully human and fully God. We describe God as transcendent and imminent. We must say that God’s new creation is already here, but not yet fulfilled. We would like definitive answers just as much as we wish we could go from Palm Sunday to the Resurrection without the darkness in between. Instead, God gives us “faith seeking understanding.” (Anselm)

We need to find ways in the coming week to recognize the human tendency to turn away from God, even when faced with God incarnate. We remember the betrayals, the denials, the arrest, the long road to Calvary, and the crucifixion, because they are reminders of who we are. We are people who are claimed and loved by God, but who often fail to live that way. We continue to allow children to be killed by guns while in a place that should be safe. We do not make sure the most vulnerable are fed, clothed, and housed. We destroy the very world that God created and pronounced good. And yet…God loves us!

We cannot fully understand the immensity of God’s love unless we remember that we are the ones who say we do not know Jesus, or who give him up for something we believe is more important, or who join a crowd and call for someone or something that cannot save us. So, we need to remember. We need to sit at the table, go to dark Gethsemane, journey to Calvary, and wait at the foot of the cross, so that we can rejoice when we hear once again that Jesus lives. 

It is my hope that you will find an opportunity to worship during Holy Week and remember so that you may rejoice on Easter!