This Easter Season

Easter is called the cornerstone of Christianity. So as a Christian, I just wanted to ramble on during this important holiday. I just can't wrap my simple mind around the historical events that happened then. This guy Jesus goes around teaching and preaching things so different but so similar to what has always been taught. He goes around healing people, teaching tolerance and acceptance of ragamuffins, shattering boundaries, blowing minds, challenging prejudices...

I've been studying the timeline of Easter, from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday. This is what I've found just reading the four gospels.

Palm Sunday, Jesus enters Jerusalem on the foal of an ass. They call this the triumphant entry. All the Jews have made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover feast that will happen later in the week (Thursday). He enters the temple while people proclaim the truth of His identity, "Hosanna in the highest!" "Son of David!" These people are excited, thrilled that Jesus is in their presence. And as He enters, He specifically comes in on a donkey. This shows humility, and the palm branches are the symbol of peace. When a King enters on a donkey with palm branches, it is a peace offering. So Jesus enters the temple proclaiming humility, peace.

The entire week He spends teaching in the temple. This is when He drives out the moneychangers, vendors, and others set up in the temple to make money. He spends His last week teaching parables about the lost son, the lost coin, all these parables pointing to the lostness of man and the eagerness God has to seek. I can just imagine the urgency of Jesus' words, the practical pleading He has for these lost souls to turn to Him. He only has a few days left in the flesh to plead with these people, to lead them, to teach them. It's inspiring, really, if you think about it.

Thursday, at the Passover feast, Jesus has His last supper with the disciples, where He washes their feet and speaks with them intimately, as friends. He reaches to them as a friend and not as their teacher or master. He is desperate. These twelve men are the hope of His truth, the hope of God's desperate rescue mission to save mankind.

After they feast, they go to Mount Olives, where the Garden of Gethsemane is. In the early hours of the day, Friday, before the sun has even risen, soldiers come with clubs and swords to seize Jesus, the same man who has been in the temple day after day, teaching among the people. They come while Jesus is on His knees, praying in earnesty, in His most vulnerable hour, literally sweating tears of blood.

The same people who less than a week before praised and exalted Jesus demand that Pilate crucify this traitor, this liar. Crucify Him! Crucify Him! Crucify Him!

By noon, Jesus is on the cross, and the world dark. God's own Son, hanging by his wrists on display, bleeding, humiliated, beaten within an inch of His life, all for being a teacher, a prophet, the testimony of love and patience and grace. Passers-by sneer at Him, mock Him, spit at Him, taunt Him, hate Him with a depth undeserved and unbelievable. This man who spent His life healing, loving, caring, calling...broken by the road, a spectacle of intolerance, hatred, injustice, prejudice...

A willing sacrifice for the sake of men, the men who nailed Him there.

Three o'clock, Jesus cries out, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" As Jesus takes on the sins of the world, past, present, future, yours and min, God must look away. His Son, who has all the authority of the universe, all the glory of God, is suddenly black with sin, dirty, unholy, impure, the darkest of human hearts is embodied in Christ the Lord. Jesus is not crying out in anguish due to His pain or humilitation or any reason of the flesh. He is crying out because He who has spent His life on earth in the presence and favor of God is suddenly apart from God. Separated from the Source of love, grace, mercy, everything good.

There is an earthquake that shakes the foundation of the world; it is over. Once and for all the blackness of our hearts that created this chasm from the God that loves us despite and in spite of ourselves is filled with a radiant change. As Jesus cloaked Himself in our unrighteousness, our murderous intentions, our dirty deeds, the secret sins behind closed doors, the perverse, the shameful, the guilty...we were cloaked in His righteousness, His right to the throne, His purity, His sacrifice, His patience, His virtue, His favor in God's eyes.

Happy Easter.