a happy ending

Americans have a really difficult time with bad endings. When the original movie Dodgeball, starring Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn, was released it was a tragedy. The underdog team of the movie, Average Joe’s, lost the dodgeball tournament. When the movie was released for private screenings it was met with horrible reviews. The overwhelming response was, “Why didn’t the underdog win?” America showed that it could not deal with an unhappy ending.

We want the guy to get the girl. We want the small guy to hit the homerun to win the game. We want to see justice done. We want to see the hero ride off into the sunset. We want the princess to live happily ever after.

This desire for happiness all the time seems to have crept into our understanding of Holy Week. This is the week in which the Church remembers the final days of Jesus’ life. It is a week that is packed with drama, intrigue, suspense, betrayal, and murder. It is a week that ended around 3 PM on Friday with Jesus breathing his last.

God, in human flesh, died.

Now I know you may be thinking, “Yeah, but he rose again!” While you are right, my question is why is it that so many people want to move right to that? We speak of Easter, and pause only momentarily to reflect on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Those days are hard and dark. Sunday is fun (beyond that we speak of the resurrection for only a few minutes of the day that is sprinkled with all sorts of horrible pastel colors, chocolate, candy, bunnies, and ugly eggs).

The reality is that on the days preceding Easter we are forced to reckon with the words of Jesus that he spoke to his disciples when he called them to pick up their cross. Jesus, when faced with execution, said to his followers, “Come with me.” He calls all of us to come and die with Him.

We are forced to contemplate the fact that all of his 12 disciples abandoned him, one of whom betrayed him, while another denied him. Thinking about this is difficult, because we see in ourselves the same propensity of betrayal and abandonment.

In spending time focusing on Jesus’ death we are forced to reflect on our own sinfulness. We are forced to recognize that it was our sinfulness that nailed him to the cross. We are forced to look inside ourselves and see that our sin is still always before us.

This is not fun. We cannot afford to gloss over the week preceding the resurrection of Jesus. It is part of the story. It is sacred. As we conclude the Lenten season for 2007 my hope is that you may spend time reflecting on what the full season means for the Church and the world. Jesus’ ordeal leading up to the cross and the cross itself was real and powerful. May we not be guilty of missing all of that simply because we want to deal only with a happy ending.