It is finished? Easter is not a 'happy ending'

So, it is finished; I made it through my challenge - Lent on a Food Bank budget. My first visit to the Co-op after the challenge was strange. And yes, to the right wing cynic who criticised me for holding on to the values of ethical shopping, I managed to keep to my convictions. Just as I did all those years ago when I was unemployed and living in Yorkshire. The poor have the right to principles, too, it just costs them more.

That visit was strange because  Lent is a long enough period to become accustomed to a change and suddenly I was free of the self imposed constraints and the liberation was not all positive. I experienced a range of emotions from a flatness that it was over to an embryonic, anxious frenzy that, left unchecked, could have taken me into a huge shopping spree. These emotions were real, even though the imposed poverty was not. There is something about taking on the reality of others that is 'magic' in the way that any story is magic because the experience makes it true.

And this is the magic of the Easter story, too. It is not in the recounting of historical events that we are transformed, but in the hearing of the story which touches our stories. For me, the cross has never been about atonement; it's not the whole 'Jesus died for my sins' thing. This is an  understanding of the events that is precious to many, but for me misses the point.

'It is finished' ; the very worst has been done, the cycle of abuse has been halted and love has, ultimately, won; not in an egotistical, vain and pompous sense, but in soaking up all that is dark and negative and arrogant and replacing it with all that is light and positive and humble. Because it is finished, it is possible to walk away, to let go, to move on.

But Easter is NOT a 'happy ending'. Jesus still has the scars of crucifixion, still remembers the betrayal and denial, the torture and the agonising death. Everything has changed, even when it appears to be the same. He is back with his friends and they still love each other, but there is a space in their loving that will forever be a scar; a beautiful scar that speaks of love, but a scar nonetheless. Even though Mary has her Jesus back after the agony of losing him, she can't hold onto him forever. Even though Peter is given the chance to put things right after denying him, he will spend the rest of his life making sure he never lets him down again.

It's no more of a happy ending than any story of a marriage begun again after infidelity, or the painful new life after bereavement.  But in this story that has come to be called The Easter Story, is a great truth; that it is only when we become lost that we can be found, when we know real fear that we are truly brave and when our hearts have been broken, that we can really love.

When the story of Easter meets our own stories, nothing is ever the same again, but we carry on living; wounded but whole, lost but found, broken-hearted but lovers.

Eva