When I was first a Christian, I found our observance of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday to be quite morbid. Whyyyy did we want to focus so much on Jesus’ last night, his arrest, and death, when Easter was just around the corner?!

It took years for me to appreciate the necessity of the Christian experience to hold the tensions of life and death as we hold fast to the promise of RESURRECTION.

This week has felt especially morbid as I’ve held the tensions of life and death in my own life. It is one thing to reflect upon the mortality of a human Jesus, knowing how the story unfolds shortly after. It is quite another to hold these tensions on our own mortality, holding fast to the promise of RESURRECTION, but not necessarily in the presence of body that you hope for.

On Tuesday morning, I went to the ER thinking I had gallstones or something along those lines because of pain in my upper abdomen. After my first CT scan, the poor ER doctor had to give me the news that I had a mass in my colon that had spread to my liver and that I needed to get more testing done quickly. Within a few days, I had an additional CT scan of my chest, a colonoscopy, and a liver biopsy.

We are still waiting on the liver biopsy but the colonoscopy confirmed colon cancer that they believe has metastasized to my liver and lungs. Whether the liver and lung nodules are the same cancer from the colon has yet to be confirmed but it is common for colon cancer to metastasize in this way.

There are a lot of unknowns right now and I think about our story in Luke’s gospel of Jesus’ last moments alive. There was so much unknown. So much disappointment. And so much love and care. From the women who stayed nearby, to the man who made sure Jesus’ body was recovered, and together, how they wrapped and cared for Jesus’ body as they laid him to rest. They had no idea what was coming!

This week, I have no idea what is coming! There is much to unfold, and in between the life and the death that we will all experience, lies the fellow humans who are here to walk beside me with love and care. You’ve done so in so many ways already and now my body is needing a little extra love and care.

So I invite you to pray with me, for me, and for my family, on this Good Friday as we reflect on Jesus’ death and the death that we each will experience - all the unknowns, all the uncertainty, all the inability to control hoped for outcomes - and that we will focus on the love and care that was demonstrated by the men and women of our gospel text this week who did not shy away from the heartbreaking news of uncertainty and disappointment.

Because the truth of it is, we do know the end of this story, and it ends in RESURRECTION! The most rebellious thing I believe we can do in life right now - whether we are talking about politics or illness, grief or despair - is hope. I believe in God’s hope and grace, so very alive in me and in all of you, and I believe that it is enough for each of us.

So even in the midst of hard news on Good Friday, may we all choose love and care for one another well and keep our eyes on that stone that we know will be rolled away. Easter is coming - of that I am sure!