This last weekend, I went to Grand Rapids to attend the Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing. My mom and daughter came along with me; it was a great weekend full of seeing old friends, making new ones, and talking about writing.

This was the third weekend in a row that I was away from home—something very odd for me. Michael and I love traveling, but I am a homebody at heart, and I love having consistency in my life.  Yet one of the sweetest things about traveling, for this homebody, is the longing that develops in me when I am away from home. There is a familiar ache that bubbles up, whether I am in Wisconsin, Colorado, or England—the ache for a place where I know the corners of the rooms, the ache for a place where the walls and bed and blankets are familiar, loved, home.

When we were in Grand Rapids this past weekend, my mother drove us past her childhood home, her elementary school, and her family’s church.  My grandpa was a Methodist minister, and so she moved several times as a child, but it was in this city that she started going to school, and her memories of Grand Rapids are vivid. I loved seeing bits of her life through these buildings—the house where she lived, the steps she climbed on her first day of kindergarten, the steeple of the church where my grandfather preached. And although those places were not mine, I felt that old ache flutter again.

C.S. Lewis has written about this ache. In “The Weight of Glory,” he writes,

These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.

“News from a country we have never yet visited.”

Home.

Easter, which we are looking toward, is about many things. But in one sense, it is about home. It is about Jesus making a way for us to be able to enter the Home that we were created for. It is that country we keep hearing news from—that ache that bubbles up, that longing that draws us to beauty and goodness and light. The ache for wholeness, and freedom, and perfection—the ache for heaven. Jesus is the only one who could become the doorway for us to that Home. His body, broken and torn, became the doorway that allows us to enter in and walk into right relationship with God. And through the doorframe of that empty tomb–his resurrection–we get to enter into that home with him, forever. He crossed the threshold from death to life and held the door open for us, too.

Home. It is what we long for, ache for, desire. This Easter, we can remember afresh that because of the great cost Christ paid for us on the cross, and because of the great miracle of his resurrection, we have an answer to all of the aching and longing that we find in our own hearts.

We can remember that we have found our truest home—in Him.

I imagine Jesus on this Monday all those years ago. I imagine him because this is Holy Week; all of our straining toward Easter during this Lenten season has brought us here, to the week of his passion. For Easter does not come, we know, without Holy Week; Holy Week with Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and finally—finally—Easter Sunday.

But first, the days before Sunday. The long road until Easter. Today is Monday. Imagine if you knew that this coming Friday, you would die. What would you spend your time doing over the next four days? Who would you talk with? How would you live?

Jesus lived knowing he was going to be dead within hours. Monday: 96 hours before his death. Tuesday: 72 hours before his death. Wednesday: 48 hours before his death. By Thursday afternoon, he was just 24 hours away from his own death—and he knew it. Can you imagine—really imagine—what it is like to stare down your own death from the short distance—a puddle-jump, really—of 24 hours? To look at it full in the face and walk toward it, unflinchingly?

All of us will die, of course. The hows and whens are, blessedly, unknown to most of us. We spend our days practically ignoring that coming death, thinking about anything but that day, fastening our seatbelts and taking our pills. But we are trying to stave it off as long as we can.

Jesus, fully God and fully human—fully human—knew what was unfolding when he entered Jerusalem on the back of a donkey in a parade of palm leaves and strewn jackets. He knew what was unraveling as Judas left the Passover meal on Thursday night, as the soldiers came marching with swords and torches. He knew.

And he did not run.

I think of him saying yes to all that was before him, embracing it for us. He stayed with his friends, walked into the city where he knew he would die, and spent his last hours talking and eating and praying with those he loved. He spent his last hours pointing the ones he loved back to himself, and thus, to God. And I think of the verses from chapter 5 of Romans:

“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.  For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Christ spent the last week of his life, essentially, as a dead man walking. He knew exactly what he was doing, and he knew there was massive pain and suffering and sorrow around the bend. He was the living dead in the truest sense, alive but headed toward one thing: his own death, for our sake. He gave his own life up for us—no one took it from him. The actions that took place and ended with Jesus hanging from two perpendicular beams were not outside of his control. He went into his death willingly.

And he became the living dead so that this could happen—so that we could become the dead living:

“Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”

We, the ones destined to die, have been given the richest chance of all—a gift greater than any lottery or prize. We have the chance to become the dead who truly live. Through Christ’s death—and that resurrection that is the miracle of Easter—we who are headed to the grave can become the ones who receive true life from him. We can look our own deaths in the face with trust, and with hope.

Jesus walked as a man marked for death—the living one, dead—so that we could become the dead who receive life.

 

During my early years, I grew up in a church that wound its way through the months by following the liturgical church calendar. We had different-colored banners up in every season of the year, based on what was being observed in the cycle of the church. The ministers wore stoles over their robes–long pieces of fabric in vibrant hues–that matched the banners and proclaimed the season the church was in.

When my husband and I attended an Anglican church for a several of years, the colors, banners, and robes took on a new significance for me. These practical reminders taught me, spiritually, how to live into time as a Christian. As a student and now as a professor, my life tends to be built around the academic calendar of semesters and summers. At that church, I learned a new way of relating to time through color.

I have been thinking about this as we head toward Easter Sunday here near the end of Lent. This season that is meant to draw our hearts and minds into somber reflection is a season of spiritual preparation and repentance as we consider the cost that Christ paid for our sin. It is also a season in which the colors change–both inside the church and outside. Lent this year is straddling the line between winter and spring, and the colors of the earth are pointing to all that Easter will bring–new life, hope, vibrancy.

But in the church, too, the colors have changed. Unlike the blazing red of Pentecost, or even the lively green of “ordinary time,” Lenten Sundays are full of the rich purple of royalty. The color reminds us, the people of God, that the King is making his way to victory, even though the victory initially looks like defeat. It reminds us of the royalty of Jesus even as he humbles himself all the way to death on a cross.

But then comes Holy Week, and with it comes a dramatic shift in hue. Although colors differ from church to church, in my memory Palm Sunday is red, looking ahead to the blood that Christ will offer on our behalf. Maundy Thursday, the night of both communion and betrayal, is white, a simple color for a somber day. But in the late hours of Maundy Thursday, the altar, cross, and banners are stripped bare of even this white fabric, leaving the symbols of faith as naked as Christ became.

Good Friday is sheathed in black. The color of mourning, the color of death. In my town, on this singular day of the year, a prominent church in the area unfurls three huge, black panels between the columns of their church entrance. They flap all day as a reminder that death is near–and that death must come before life.

Easter, in color as well as in truth, turns everything on its head. In Christ, death is turned to life; mourning is turned to joyful celebration. Resurrection–the reversal of the normal order–occurs. White is the color of the day, a reminder that he who first appeared plain–a Jewish man who was betrayed and killed–is actually more than a man. This simple hue is also, wonderfully, a reminder that white is actually the confluence of all color, and that in the resurrection, Christ has renewed all things. Nothing is outside of his healing, restorative resurrection.

Although I am no longer part of a liturgical congregation, I find myself drawn to the richness of the tradition, and to the power that simple things like colors have to tell us about the Gospel and about how we fit into the larger story of the Church. I may not see the banners and the robes on a weekly basis, but I try to remember the significance as I walk through the Lenten season.

In these days leading up to Easter, I want to more fully ponder the royalty of Jesus, this one who left his heavenly throne for an earthly cross. I want to remember the simplicity of this god-man who was stripped bare and bled. I want to take time to mourn the true death that he died, and then to anticipate the upending power of the resurrection and the newness that he brought to all life. He is the one making all things new.

How are you seeing Jesus in new ways in this Lenten season?

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*Adapted from an earlier blog post from March 2013

I am not a slow person. I like to keep things moving, figuratively and practically (I get annoyed when people drive below the speed limit). My top two strengths from the Strengthsfinder test are Belief and Achiever, followed by Responsibility. This means that if I believe in something, I will go to nearly any lengths to accomplish what needs to get done in order to see that thing through. I have a high value for accomplishing things, getting stuff done, and doing them well–and responsibly.

But this weekend, I slowed down. Way down. It was the first weekend in months that I did not have papers to grade, lesson plans to write, a writing deadline to meet, or a ministry event to attend. And instead of resorting to my usual default mode, which includes trying to get ahead with work, ministry, or the house, I rested. I spent time with my family. We played Sequence and Catch Phrase. When Ella napped on Saturday afternoon, I took a nap, too. And then I did the same thing on Sunday afternoon. When the weather was nice yesterday (glory, glory, hallelujah), rather than go on a run with Ella in the jogging stroller, I decided to enjoy the day and walk—slowly—around the neighborhood and up to the park. Michael joined me after his meeting ended and we walked in looping circles together while Ella sat contentedly and watched the world roll by.

I needed to slow down. I spend a lot of time moving, going, working, pushing. I needed to pull back and remember that I can’t do it all. I can’t even do most of it. My life is not a race. It is a relationship with God and those I love.

And relationship requires slowing down. As we inch our way closer to Easter, yet still situated in this season of Lent, I am remembering lines from Psalm 127:2.

It is in vain that you rise up early
and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for he gives to his beloved sleep.

Sleep. Rest. Lack of anxiety. Those can’t come from naps and slow walks—the internal rest and peace that I need can only come from God’s presence in my life, from trusting him with all of the things I can never achieve or accomplish.

But naps and slow walks this past weekend reminded me that I don’t have to always be doing and pushing and working. I can rest in God. I can trust him. And although there are many seasons in which there is much that must get done, sometimes I can take a nap and remember who is really in control. It’s not me.