Happy Easter! It is not an easy road! This message has come across in the portraits of Jesus’s life presented to us in the liturgies of Holy Week. He faced conflicts with the powers of his time, accusations, an unfair judgment, betrayal, abandonment, blows, imprisonment, spitting, mockery, and crucifixion. It was not an easy road for God’s Son.
But that was not all. Our readings tonight call us to remember and recognize the great deeds of God that prepared the way for Jesus. Repeatedly, we hear how God dramatically intervenes in human affairs to create, to call, to save, to reprimand, to comfort, and to form covenants. The dramatic intervention of God in human history peaks when God sends his own Son, who enters our world, talks our talk, walks our walk, not as a prince but as a slave destined to suffer, and to die like a criminal.
But again, that would not be all. God intervenes. He would not let his servant know decay or abandon him in the netherworld (Psalm 16:10 and Acts 2:27). Rather, in the dead of night, when the powers that be thought that it was all over, the mighty hand of God again dramatically intervened. He whom they crucified, God raised from the dead (Acts 4:10), and through him, God offers redemption, healing, and new life to the whole world.
As we remember and recognize, we cannot fail to note that although the resurrection of his Son is a powerful intervention of God in world history, it takes place quietly, like the Incarnation. There are no bells and whistles. There is the faintest of light, dawn was just breaking when the whole world was renewed. The most powerful interventions of God in the world take place in the ordinary, in the quiet, with little notice.
Dear brothers and sisters, our reflection on Jesus’s road and God’s intervention on that road should draw us to remember and recognize God’s intervention in our own lives. Like Jesus’s road, ours is often not an easy road. Most of us live ordinary lives. We struggle to get through school and then to find some job or discern a calling. It is often a struggle to make ends meet, to raise a family, to take care of our loved ones, to stay healthy, to remain true to the promises we make, etc. None of that is easy.
Even for those whose lives appear to be glittery and glamorous, when they open up about their journeys, what we hear is often not a bed of roses. It is broken hearts, broken relationships, dependence on substances, failed families, desperate attempts to find meaning in life, etc.
Tonight’s readings should help us to remember and recognize that, on our difficult roads, God’s presence has been pervasive and reassure us that he will be there with us in the days ahead. He did not abandon his Son. He will not abandon us. He continues to act powerfully in the ordinary, the quiet, with little notice. All he asks of us is to follow his Son on the road of new life to rise with him.