God is love.
He is love.
He was God. He didn’t have to submit to any of it. So the very definition of love is the God-made-man who chose to carry the means of his torture up a hill and then allowed us to hang him on it.
The very definition of love is thirsting for souls with arms outstretched, begging us to receive what he is offering.
The very definition of love is waiting in the stillness and the silence of the tomb while we weep, willing us to draw near, to take a chance, to be hopeful enough — vulnerable enough — to look inside and discover why the stone was rolled away.
The very definition of love is appearing to the women, seeing them, recognizing them, calling them by name, and charging them to go and tell.
This is love. God is love. God made himself vulnerable to humanity, and God got hurt. He was rejected, disrespected, battered, bruisedand broken. God is love, and this is what love looks like. It’s hard. You will get hurt. He invites us to pick up our crosses and follow him, and he shows us that it looks like suffering.
The story of Easter literally begins with compassion and it culminates in compassion. Compassion means to enter into the passion, to suffer with someone. That’s what Jesus does. He chooses to suffer. That’s what Love does. And that’s what we are called to do when we choose to follow him.
Jesus went first. He showed us what it looks like to live — and die— with a heart that allows itself to be hurt. He showed us that when we stretch out our arms and leave our hearts open wide and vulnerable to pain, that is when we are most like him.
We are Easter people. We believe in grace and mercy and resurrection and alleluias. But first comes being open to pain, even the pain of our own making. We want to be like Jesus, but we fall short of his glory. We willingly enter into the passion, and in our humanity, we make mistakes. Terrible mistakes. We wish we could change them. Arms wide open, we’ve taken chances on love, believing that we could be enough to tenderly care for God’s people— our spouses, our children, our neighbors, the strangers. And we have messed it up. We’ve gotten it wrong. We’ve stumbled and we have fallen with a force that takes our breath away. We are not nearly enough, and it hurts to take inventory of our most grievous faults.
How good it is to have a Savior with us in the suffering. How good it is to know that the risen Lord makes all things new. He can take our mistakes and use them to change us. He can heal us. He can love us well.
The story of Easter is one of redemption and restoration for all of us who make ourselves vulnerable enough to love. As you follow him, maybe you find yourself betrayed. Maybe you are misunderstood, rejected, reviled, spat upon. Maybe you are exhausted under the heavy weight of your own suffering or under the weight of helping to carry someone else’s cross. Maybe you hang, love and life poured out, feeling near to death. Or maybe you are quiet, still, waiting in the tomb.
Wherever you are, he is there. And he is love.
And Easter is for you.
Foss, whose website is takeupandread.org, writes from Connecticut.
