For good and bad I realized, only Jesus for my pain – Cory Asbury
Editor’s Note: Due to first year faculty life, Bryce’s brief Good Friday reflection is publicly available on his personal Facebook page.
The hymn, Is Anyone Worthy, has been walking me through this Lenten season, an irony given my Lenten series is titled after an entirely different hymn. I’ve never claimed Holy Spirit is without humor.
The hymn opens with a timely question and answer: Do you feel the world is broken? We do. We don’t need to look far to feel the brokenness of the world. We have buried children, experienced divorce, watched bombs fall, read about sex trafficking. We have felt the ordinary aches too, the days we’ve woken up on the wrong side of the bed, the simple yet profound longings for heaven.
Normally, on Easter, we spend the bulk of our time meditating on the risen King. Chris died on Friday to save us from our sins, and he rose triumphantly on Sunday. There are a million apt explanations for why we feel such joy at the triumph of King Jesus on Sunday morning. Easter is literally a celebration of light and life’s triumph over darkness and death.
But what happens when Monday comes? What happens when Jesus ascends back into heaven and the mundanity of life creeps back in? What happens when all we have left is an empty tomb and our same problems?
If all of our hope is in Jesus, that means the jubilant hope of Sunday is in Jesus, and the mournful hope of Good Friday is in Jesus, and the unexceptional hope of Monday is in Jesus. Is the man Jesus worthy of all of these states of our hope? Is he really worthy of all of this?
Before he died, Jesus made many covert prophecies about his death and resurrection, prophecies that in hindsight were clear as day. In the moment though, for his family, friends, and followers, his prophecies were ramblings known to be important, but uncertain in which exact way.
Shortly after his first miracle turning water into wine, in John’s account of the Gospel, Jesus flips merchant tables in the temple, disgusted with the commercialization of God’s sacred house of worship. When asked for a sign by the Jews, Jesus responds:
Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
John 2:19 NRSVue
The Jews don’t know what to make of this, given that the temple took decades to build. But Jesus wasn’t talking about stone; he was speaking about his body, prophesizing his death at the hands of religious and political elites (the destruction of the temple) and his eventual resurrection (in three days’ time).
Our own experience with the mystery of prophecy can be found in the book of Revelation. Much has been written and spoken about this book of visions experienced by John by people much wiser than me. Anyone worth their salt will tell you, though, that the best we can do when studying Revelation is guess. All that will be has not happened yet and, thus, all that will be made clear cannot be fully understood yet.
What we do know is that Jesus Christ is the only entity, in heaven or earth or under the earth, that is able to open the scrolls that usher in the apocalypse and, eventually, the new Earth.
Even on Resurrection Sunday, we as humans still linger a bit in the anxious anticipation of Saturday. Jesus is alive, but so are we, and we find ourselves caught in this tension of joy in his resurrection and reality of our lives still playing out on this unholy side of heaven. Maybe this Easter has you feeling a dulled sort of hope. Maybe you’re just trying to keep getting through the day. Maybe you’ve even been thinking about letting the day end without you seeing it. (If that’s you – we’ve all been there. It’s okay to ask for help. You can call, chat, or text 988 if you’re in the US, visit the Samaritan Befrienders in Hong Kong, 1Life in India, Samaritans of Singapore in Singapore, or find support in your country here).
The good news of Easter is that, even as we head out of the season of Lent and into the season of Eastertide, we are still waiting on the full realization of hope. It’s okay to still have questions looking into the empty tomb. It’s okay to still be suffering in grief and agony and watching Jesus ascend and finding yourself left behind watching.
The man Jesus is not a story that was wrapped up in 33 human years. The man Jesus is a story that was written, as John’s gospel begins, with the Triune God creating life together. The story of Jesus has been around since the very beginning. Later in Genesis, Jacob declares that the Messiah will come from the lineage of Judah. Thus, one of Jesus’ titles is The Lion of Judah. The prophet Isaiah also prophesizes the coming of the Messiah through the root of Jesse and thus the line of David. We see the story of Jesus play out across centuries, even millions of years for those of us old earthers. This is a man worth waiting for. This is a man worthy of our hope
It gets even better though. The prophet Isaiah encourages us:
He shall not judge by what his eyes see or decide by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge for the poor and decide with equity for the oppressed of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist and faithfulness the belt around his loins. The wolf shall live with the lamb; the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the lion will feed and the fatted calf together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. ‘
Isaiah 11:3b-9 NRSVue
Do you feel the world is broken? There’s a just judge who can fix that.
Do you feel oppressed and marginalized? There’s a King who will be faithful to rescue you.
Do you have enemies? There’s a world coming in which we’re friends.
Do you hurt? Have you witnessed destruction? There’s a mountain where no tears are shed and loss is not even a memory.
Easter is good because the man Jesus has risen but all of my hope is in the man Jesus because I know he is coming again. Wars will cease. Tears will dry. The dead will live again.
All my hope is in Jesus today even in the midst of chaos and longing and pain and unanswered questions. Easter doesn’t just remind me of a long ago story of resurrection; it reminds me that resurrection is also yet to come.
Hold on to the hem of his robe, friends, even if you can only hold on with a finger. Even when Monday comes, our resurrection is still coming.
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Bryce Van Vleet is the #1 selling author of Tired Pages and Before We All Die Let’s Have One Last Chat by the Fireside. He sells poetry art here, published a collection of poems titled Weak Eyes, and masquerades as the spoken word artist Liihey. You can support him by clicking through blog posts or donating (scroll to the bottom of the page).
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