2 of 2

I found myself crying the whole time I was there — this some 27 years after her death. My sister asked if this was hard for me to be there. No, it wasn't, I replied. But I couldn't pinpoint what I was crying about, because no particular memory of my mother had been stirred up, and I was not feeling an acute sense of loss. My tears were simply a jumble of long-settled grief and gratitude.

Nothing like this could possibly happen at the Golden Gate Bridge.

Sometimes I wonder if Easter has become the Golden Gate Bridge of the church, where we pull out all the stops, importing brass and balloons and a green house of lilies, all to create an overwhelming, magnificent effect. This would not be a concern if it weren't for the fact that week by week, we act like we have cremated death. No more graveyards around the church. No small-group Bible studies on how to die well. No spiritual disciplines that focus on our mortality — like the medieval practice of meditating on a skull. No more preaching about our mortality, except as a quick setup for eternal life. No, it's your best life now. We know that if we are going to keep those pews filled, we can't be going on and on about death.

A young woman is told by her fiancé that the relationship is over. She comes home and says she's not going to dwell on the negative. She had a great relationship with him, but now it's time to move on. Accent the positive. Make plans for the future. Her best years are still ahead of her! If a friend did this, most of us would say she is living in denial, refusing to allow herself to grieve a real loss.

I sometimes wonder whether our churches — living as we do in American death-denying culture, relentlessly smiling through our praise choruses — are inadvertently helping people not live in hope as much as in denial.

"There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization," said philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. "So it is with all joy: life's highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death."

To put it theologically, just as we like to note that Good Friday points to Easter, Easter points back to Good Friday. Easter is not about a giddy happiness that dulls the pain of life, helping us forget our troubles for a day. It is about a sobering hope for those in the midst of a death walk — that is, all of us.

Don't get me wrong: I love joyous, even giddy celebrations of the Resurrection. My church has the most glorious Easter celebration of any church I've been in, and I cherish it. But I believe we would all be better served if our Resurrection celebrations were framed by deeper and more regular reflection on our mortality. Many liturgical churches do that well, because the entire Holy Week is a sobering series of services that help one mourn (Matt. 5.3) so that on Easter one can ever more deeply be blessed. But most evangelicals churches don't have the resource of Holy Week services, and too many do their very best to avoid anything negative any week. I understand the motive for that—it's really hard to do that in this culture—but I believe it makes our celebrations shallow.

Admittedly, there is a thin boundary between denial and hope, but one sign that we have not crossed that line might be the unexpected flow of tears that mix grief and joy in one unseemly profusion.

Mark Galli is senior managing editor of Christianity Today. He is author of A Great and Terrible Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Attributes of God (Baker) explores a variety of spiritual themes on his blog.

Copyright © 2009 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Previous SoulWork columns are available on our site.

first page |  2 of 2

share this page

April (Web-only) 2009, Vol. 53