Lent is upon us, Good Friday ahead. You needn’t be a Christian to grasp the season’s
meaning. Allegorically, it’s universal. We are called to prepare, that Easter may dawn
again.
Easter recounts the miracle of Christ consciously returning to life from beyond the veil of
death. It’s hard to imagine what a stunning event that must have been. The underlying
message for us, however, is far deeper than the Wow! of his physical reappearance.
Christians honor Christ as their Redeemer, but that mainly misses the message of his
resurrection. Jesus was not pointing to himself. He was saying to one and all, “These
things ye shall do and greater” if only you will redeem yourself of delusion. Why bear the
suffering it imposes?
Jesus set the bar as high as anyone could with the aim of inspiring us by his example.
He accepted both his duty and his destiny with love and forgiveness even for those who
carried out his death. And so, in view of our world today and the pall of its uncertainties,
the question is whether threats to our public welfare is truly the challenge before us. Or
is it the cross of our delusions?
We have borne that cross throughout history as if fearing to put it down, lest we get
nailed to it. Spoiler alert: The nails are in the bearing.
Yogis know that courage is a daily practice. It’s about seeing all before us as given of
God, as a spiritual opportunity to act upon with faith. Jesus did not shrink from fulfilling
his mission. We think of him as making the ultimate sacrifice. But was that the end of
the story? The yogi knows that endings mark new beginnings, and that when bravely
met, they resurrect a buried part of our consciousness, lifting it to a higher level of
attunement.
Death will come to us too, surely of no such drama as the death of Jesus. Yet now is the
time to ask how we want to come back: fearful or unafraid, bearing delusion’s cross or
having set it down? What are you practicing?
Jesus showed us on the Easter morning in Jerusalem the promise of resting our faith in
the wisdom, will and ways of God. And he showed that when we do, there is no
suffering, only perhaps a brief experience of pain in exchange for a consciousness of
bliss that no earthly achievement can offer.
