I sat in my dorm room at my faith-based university and listened to everyone talk about going home for Easter. In my mind I mocked them. “I’m going home to my perfect little family where we are going to do all those perfect things that perfect little families do, like hunt Easter eggs, have a family meal without any fighting or name calling and go to church together.” Their talk made me sick to my stomach.
I hated Easter; I hated it with a passion because it meant my dorm closed and I had to go to my parents’ house. That’s where the drunk and the brother hooked on pot lived. Fat chance that either of them would want to go to church, and the family meal would be laced with tension, everyone walking on eggshells in order to keep the peace, and demeaning their favorite target, me. I could just hear my father, “Hey Charlie, you’re the family flower, a blooming idiot,” with my brother joining in the raucous laughter. For me Easter offered nothing except ridicule, pain, and heartache.
Yet even as I thought about what was coming during that looming Easter holiday, there was a gentle awareness (some would describe it as a small inner voice that differs from their own) that urged me to reconsider. The tug at the very core of my being was simple: I was being urged to look away from myself and place my eyes on Christ.
I did not want to do that. I wanted to think about the drunk and the pot addict who were going to ruin Easter. In short, I wanted to stay in my comfortable world of hate and despair. Yet that gentle awareness kept tugging at me.
I wish I could say I immediately gave in and looked up to Christ but that would be a lie. I fought against the gentle tugs.
Although the tugging stayed gentle, it did become more insistent. The seven hour drive to my parents’ house was the perfect opportunity for that small, quiet inner voice to aggressively speak to me. I finally gave in and looked away from all the misery I was comfortable living in.
As I began thinking of the events that led to that first Easter, I lowered my head in shame. Christ had twelve disciples. These were twelve men who were His closest friends. Three of them made up Jesus’s inner circle. Yet when the chips were down and their lives were on the line, all of them ran. Jesus was left all alone. As we read through the accounts of what happened to Him after his closest friends deserted Him, we find that He was mocked, spit upon, beaten, and had the flesh ripped off His body by being lashed 40 times with a scourge (the Romans called this the near death).
As I thought of what Jesus went through, I compared his situation to mine. He was mocked like I had been and was going to be…but that is as far as it went for me. What He endured was so much more, including one of the cruelest forms of execution mankind has ever devised. And yet the gospel of Luke tells us that Jesus forgave those who put Him there. Compared to that, what right did I have to hold anything against my father and brother?
When that thought hit me, I had a spark of hope. It wasn’t a hope that everything would be alright. It was hope that although my father was struggling with alcohol and my brother with pot, Christ would give me the ability to endure. Actually, I knew He would give me the ability to not only endure but to love unconditionally, through the Holy Spirit who Jesus sent us after his death and resurrection.
This is the hope I found in Easter. The hope was not that everything would be instantly better. Instead, it was a deeper hope that allowed me to love a drunk and an addict unconditionally, knowing that Christ died for them, and that the same quiet awareness I was experiencing was at work inside of them.
It took years before the drunk became a father and the addict a brother, yet it did happen.
This is the same hope that Christ holds out to each of us. Maybe for you it’s a son or daughter who is addicted to alcohol or pot and needing God’s unconditional love. Whatever your situation this Easter, Jesus’s hope is the same.
We need to make a decision on whether we will lift our eyes to Him or keep our eyes on ourselves. Trust me, lifting our eyes to him is a far easier path to walk. Won’t you join me?
Doctor Chuck Glenn is the Chair of the Religion Study Committee for the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services. His educational history includes a Master of Arts in Biblical Studies, and a Doctorate of Theology. He currently resides in Nebraska with his wife, daughter, and a small white fluffy dog named Oscar.