To Hell in a Handbasket (or Easter Basket)

Following Jesus this Easter by Geoff Ryan

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rucifixion precedes resurrection. That’s the way it works. In emotional, psychological and spiritual terms this is always true. You can’t get to Jesus unless you go through John the Baptist, you can’t get to Easter Sunday morning without living through Good Friday, you can’t resurrect until you’ve been crucified.

But there is one more step involved that we rarely talk about in church circles. As you had to go out into the desert to meet John, a crucial passage takes place been crucifixion and resurrection - there is a whole “day” that was lived between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

As Protestants, even more so as evangelicals, we can’t wait to get to Sunday morning:  all those hot cross buns and chocolate eggs, the world becomes soft and pastel coloured, we buy gifts for our kids as if it’s a mini-spring Christmas. If we wear a cross around our necks then it will be an empty cross, because we are a resurrection people.

As a kid growing up in this milieu I always considered Good Friday a drag. It was a somber, gloomy day, inevitably it rained and family dynamics took on a serious mean. The city seemed hushed and quiet.

Saturday brought some relief. It was a filler day, basically dead time. We still kept a low profile, but Mom and Dad cut us more slack than the day before. The expectations on us to be sad started to ease and with mounting glee in our hearts we gathered ourselves for Sunday morning.

I expect that had I grown up in a Catholic or Eastern Orthodox family, it would have been the other way around. I would have worn a cross with Jesus still on it and I would have been all about Good Friday (or “Passion Friday” as the Orthodox call it). Remember Mel Gibson’s film of a few years ago? Gibson is a Catholic and he made a very Catholic film, entitling it “The Passion”, and focusing exclusively on the crucifixion of Jesus because for them that is where all the real important stuff happened.

Proverbs tell us that the man of God avoids all extremes though and the kicker in this particular resurrection is not that a dead man came back to life as that had been done before - Lazarus, for example. What was special about this one is what he died with and what he rose without. In comparison with Lazarus’ episode was a simple party trick.

The physical exigencies of the crucifixion isn’t what finished Jesus off. When the soldiers came round to break his legs, as they usually did as an act of belated mercy to cut short the suffering of the executed, they were surprised to find that he was already dead. What actually killed him was this:  every sin ever committed, from the beginning of time to the end of the world, from The Fall to The Apocalypse - every lie and theft, every act of abuse and betrayal, every punch, every gunshot, every overdose, every single bad thing committed by every person who ever lived…all this was trammeled into a single concentrated mass and driven into his soul. No man - or God - could survive this. He who was without sin became sin for us; behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world; etc.

What happened next? Where did he go with all this sin? Picture, if you can, Jesus with his arms outstretched, absolutely full and piled high with our sins. The Bible tells us that he took it to hell (the Orthodox acknowledge this better than the rest of us, look on any Russian crucifix and you will see a cross bar for Jesus feet to rest his feet on, pointing downward toward hell and, in the case of a really ornate crucifix, a pile of skulls and bones). He took it all to hell, because that is where this sort of stuff belongs, and he left it there. Then, and only then, he rose again, with his arms empty and without our sins. That’s what makes this particular resurrection so important for the human race.

Sure what happened on Friday is most important and so is what happened on Sunday morning. Without either of these events bookending our annual commemoration, Easter would not be, well….Easter. But let’s not forget what happened on Saturday and maybe this year, especially what happened on Saturday.

Going to hell with Jesus! What an Easter that would be.

Writer: Major Geoff Ryan is co-founder of theRubicon and was publisher for three years. He is co-ordinator of the 614 Network and organizes the bi-annual Urban Forum. His interests include writing, politics, coffee and his children. Geoff and his wife Sandra minister in Regent Park, a social housing project in downtown Toronto, Canada.   

1 Comment to To Hell in a Handbasket (or Easter Basket)

1. Jeff thank you for the most interesting post.

   Good Friday growing up in the Armstrong home as kids it was also a very sad time and yes it would rain and the sky darkened we had to stay home . Down the street from then Norwood Corps there was a Greek market where they made all kihds of Easter chocolate bunnies and crosses. I would go and just look at it all in the window because at our house it was about Jesus who died on that cross for us all. Yes the church now plays a part of hide the bunny.

   At park services I would tell the people that we have not come to scare the hell out of you, but to tell you about the love of Jesus who died on a cross and shed His blood for us all. Like the story goes “Its Friday but Sunday’s a coming”.

   Preach on Jeff. Blessed Easter to all your family

   Henry A.
Henry Armstrong on March 31st, 2010

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