Jesus is dead. The disciples have all scattered. The religious leaders have gone home thinking Jesus has been taken care of once and for all.
And the rest of us?
Honestly, we don’t know what to do. We do our best to pick up the pieces and go on. Like Cleopas and his friend in Luke 24, we’re walking to Emmaus confessing, “We had hoped.”
“We had hoped…” meaning we aren't hoping anymore.
Is there any sadder confession in all of the Bible? We had hoped Jesus would change things, but now that He is dead… we have lost that hope.
This is the day we experience the end of it all… the day we force ourselves to sit down and think about what life would be like if Christ had not been raised from the dead.
What would it mean to be lost knowing you would never be found… to be wounded, but never be healed?
Hopeless? Despair? All that and more. This is the human condition. Death threatens to rob us of all meaning.
“We are dust… and to dust we shall return.”
We don’t like this day. We would rather run by it and get to the good news of Easter.
But we need to sit down and think about what it would be like if this were the end of Christ’s story.
What would life be without the hope of the resurrection?
What if we were left to face the present and the future all by ourselves?
Yeah, I know. It’s not pretty. Today, we need to remember that.
