Some thoughts on Easter

The following is the text of a talk I'm giving this morning at church on the crucifixion. (Of course, it will be followed by someone else speaking about the resurrection.) Happy Easter!

When Jesus Christ hung on the cross at Golgotha, for those who loved and believed in him as the Savior of the world, not only did their friend, brother, son, or teacher hang upon the cross; their very hope for salvation did, also. As we read the New Testament, it seems to us full of Christ's foreshadowing his imminent death, with more subtle references to his resurrection. Yet it also seems clear that his disciples did not understand what was to happen. Even during the fateful time in Gethsemane, during their last hours with him, some of those who loved him most carelessly slept. Not expecting his crucifixion, we can imagine the anguish the women who loved him must have felt standing "afar off" as he hung there, dying. And their confusion - how could this be? How can He die, with Israel still not redeemed?

The illusion that somehow all is lost is a powerful motif throughout the Gospel. I felt this strongly at the dedication of the Nauvoo temple several years ago. I felt the despair, even abandonment by God, that the saints must have felt long ago as they left behind almost all they had -- their beautiful city they had built from the swamp, the martyred body of their beloved Joseph the Prophet, and mostly the temple that they had sacrificed so much for, the powerful symbol that they could hope for eternal life in the world to come. Indeed, all might have seemed lost, and much genuinely was. Yet 150 years later, there we were, a beautiful temple rebuilt in that very city, again led by a prophet of God, now a prosperous and blessed people. The gut wrenching sacrifice and loss of those early saints somehow made everything possible. In the moment when everything seemed lost, everything was actually being won. As real as their suffering was, as abandoned as they might have felt, God was working, and always does work, in His mysterious way.

As Latter-day Saints, we often focus on the atonement and resurrection, and rightly so. These two acts in effect comprise our salvation from spiritual and physical death, making Jesus our Savior in deed. And yet between those two supernal events that he performed for us, he suffered, died, and was buried, and in this valley of the shadow of death there is much to reflect on. The atonement and the suffering it entailed are in many ways impossible for us to understand. It is an abstract occurrence that could only have been endured and wrought by a God, as indeed Jesus was.

But the crucifixion - the scorn, the pain, the nails tearing the flesh, the agonizing shortness of breath, even His heartbreaking cry of "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me" - these are not abstract to us. These are the pains of mortality - the darkness that descends sometimes in our lives, the physical pain, the isolation, the separation from those we love, the spiritual distance from God. It is sometimes even enough that we cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

It seems that one thing we can learn from the crucifixion of He who was greatest among us is that we shouldn't necessarily expect it otherwise. Sometimes our greatest hopes appear dead and gone, sealed inside a sepulcher. We suffer, in a genuine way; we cannot see how things can possibly go forward.

This is another possible lesson of the crucifixion. That God does work in mysterious ways, and that when it seems all is lost, in our darkest hours, God is still working among us. That in that very hour, everything is still working for our good. Even if we are forsaken for a time, it is somehow with a glorious purpose, and our hope that seemed to us eternally sealed in a tomb, will emerge, bright, new, and perfect.