They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread. (Luke 24)

Outside our patio doors on 104th Ave it’s snowing great wet flakes. An old man with a bulging back-pack walks by, followed by a young women walking a sand-coloured spaniel. All three, man, woman and dog look around with expressions of mild incredulity. (What? You’ve never seen a spaniel look incredulous?) And I’m thinking, well, if they find snow in April hard to believe they’re never going to believe the thing that happened all those Easter’s ago.

Outside our patio doors on 104th Ave it’s snowing great wet flakes. An old man with a bulging back-pack walks by, followed by a young women walking a sand-coloured spaniel. All three, man, woman and dog look around with expressions of mild incredulity. (What? You’ve never seen a spaniel look incredulous?) And I’m thinking, well, if they find snow in April hard to believe they’re never going to believe the thing that happened all those Easter’s ago.

Jesus has risen!

I think this belief, that I now hold onto both tenaciously and effortlessly, seeped in as I watched my mother prepare and serve a thousand evening meals. It’s taken me all these years to see the connection between the Lord’s table and her’s.

Our faith’s central practise is the Eucharist–a table gathering. We are a community gathered around the Eucharist. It’s in the breaking of bread where we come to know Jesus and are made known to one another.

Christ is met in the breaking of bread, in the small acts of kindness, the small gifts of human reception. Christ’s resurrection is published in a smile of acceptance.

Jesus has risen indeed!

Hear my prayer, O LORD, and give ear unto my cry; hold not thy peace at my tears: for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were. (Psalm 39)

Saturday, a day of limbo. With the strange exhilaration of the crucifixion gone, we now wait for something. But what? We sense no presence.

In this vacuum there is only confusion. Our minds are numb and our eyes sting from the spectacle, there is nothing else.

We receive no understanding about all this. Jesus cried out seemingly forsaken, confused, and was delivered unto the deep and dark-knowing absence.

…Perhaps this day, between the shock of Good Friday and Easter Sunday, like no other day, we might sense the reality of our fractured-selves. We are nomads, wonderers, strangers. Too often strangers to each other, and strangers to ourselves.

…I have lived in this twilight for too long. I want to break out this Easter. I want to feel at home in my world and in my skin. I want Easter to firmly plant me in the world. I no longer want to be an alien, I want to be a resident. The world decays, I decay. This is real but it isn’t all there is. The world will be new, one Easter day, and so will I. This is real.

We watched “Lord of War” last night. The movie, supposedly based on true accounts, depicts the madness of international conflict, and the dictators and the “freedom-fighters” and the gun-runners that keep the machinery of violence oiled.

It’s a movie as good as any to call to mind the reasons behind, and the necessity of, “Good” Friday. It shows our incapability to extricate ourselves from mimetic, reciprocal and victimizing violence.

As it is, only some intimate and totalizing experience with someone who simply refuses to retaliate has a prayer in the face of our blind addiction of sacrificing others to secure our own lives.

Friday’s here.

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, you also ought to love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (Jesus)

It’s Thursday, there’s a gathering, a passover supper, a foot washing, a hint of impending betrayal. And after, as Jesus walks into the gathering night to the Mount of Olives and then to Gethsemane, he takes a moment to talk to his disciple-friends about something that sums up his heart and his life.

The term Maundy is from the Latin word mandatum. It means “to give,” “to entrust”. Jesus entrusts us to a new thing, a new way of living, a new way of seeing through the lense of love.

Mandatum is where we get our English word mandate. The Christian mandate is love. Love is the distillation of our faith. There is nothing else. Why is it so hard for us to get this right?

God help us as we move into the imminent dark of the crucifixion.