There was once little boy who was not very happy about going to church on Easter Sunday. His new shoes were too tight, his tie pinched his neck and the weather was just too beautiful to be cooped up inside. As he sulked in the back seat of their car on the way to church, and the parents heard him mutter: "I don't know why we have to go to church on Easter, anyway; they keep telling the same old story and it always comes out the same in the end."

A part of the difficulty we have of trying to come to grips with the terribly gruesome event of Good Friday is that we know how the story ends. Its like watching a football game on video tape when you already know who won the game! It is hard for us to imagine, that despite his predictions of the cross and the resurrection, that Jesus may have entered the events of Good Friday, without knowing for a certainty if those predictions would come true. It is hard for us to imagine that his painful cry from the cross, "My God, my God why have you forsaken me?" was an expression of the utter loneliness that he was experiencing. It is hard for us to imagine that on that cross Jesus was fully human. He did not feel the pain any less, he did not experience the anxiety any less, the loneliness, the distance from God any less than any of us would or do. But the battle had to be fought through to the end. It was real and it was hard. I don't want to assume that Jesus knew for an absolute certainty how the story would to end. The predictions were his statements of faith. When he went to the cross he took an enormous risk of faith that God would actually win the victory and vindicate him.

So, last Friday night, we had a Good Friday worship. It was a meditative worship -- where we told the story, and we turned off the candles and lights so that at the end we were in complete darkness, and we could meditate at the foot of the cross. As I sat there in my meditation, a picture of children came to mind. I don't know why I had a picture of children. Perhaps it was because children signify our best hope in a broken world. Or, it may be because I've been going to see Sabrina Crawford, a 14 year old girl who is very sick and in hospital. This lovely little girl has been sick for a very long time. She's not able to go to school much and is not able to do the kinds of things other kids and her friends are able to do, because she is in the hospital so much. This past week she was in Intensive Care. Now she's in a regular room -- and when she is not too tired or sleeping she is a very cheerful person.. She seems to be getting better, so she may go home soon. But how much longer will it be before she is back in hospital? I want to go to see her this afternoon -- take her some of these beautiful flowers -- to tell her Happy Easter. And I wonder if that would mean anything to her. It is hard for her to think of Easter when she is still very much in the midst of a Good Friday experience.

Or it may be because I was remembering Timothy Thomas. Nineteen year old Timothy Thomas was ready to start a new chapter in his life. This June, he was going to get married to his fiancee Monique Wilcox. He thought it was the right thing to do, now that they had a three month old son, Tywon. Last Saturday night, he left the apartment that he shared with Monique in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood of Cincinnati to buy cigarettes at a nearby store.

That's when he ran into police officers who wanted to serve him papers because he had some violations and he had not appeared in court like he was supposed to. But Timothy saw them and got scared. Like how a lot of black kids get scared when they see white police officers. He ran for his life -- leading the police in a chase over a 10-foot fence and the back length of an abandoned building. Rounding a blind corner in the dark of night, he suddenly came face-to-face with Officer Steve Roach, who was sprinting up a driveway to stop him. It wasn't so much of a confrontation, as a surprise. Some say Timothy started to pull up his pants up because they were falling -- you know how kids wear pants these days! But the officer may have thought that he was trying to pull a gun and shot him in the chest. It was 2:20 in the morning, last Saturday when Timothy was killed. And he was unarmed. Young people, don't you run if a police officer stops you -- or make any sudden movements. These situations can get so highly charged that an officer sometimes fearing for his life can mistake any of your movements for pulling a gun.

Yesterday, they had funeral services for Timothy Thomas. Looked like the several days of looting and riots in the city of Cincinnati had stopped. But questions of racial profiling and police brutality will remain for awhile. His mother Angela Leisure was on the news speaking about her son. And I wondered, if she would go to church today to Pilgrim Baptist Church, how can anyone say to her today, Happy Easter, Angela. Her grief will stay with her. It will be Good Friday for a long time to come.

No, platitudes aren't enough. Slogans won't cut it. Easter will be just another meaningless story, just another opportunity to have some fun with eggs and bunnies with our children, if we do not take Good Friday seriously. So, on Friday night we tried to get engaged with the cross -- to honestly admit our pain, to pray for the pain of others around us and to commit ourselves to be obedient to God to be God's people at those places of pain.

Most of us, perhaps all of us, live with a lot of pain and struggle. Everyday when we wake up in the morning, we are reminded of the struggle its going to be. We have enormous anxiety and worry about our daily existence. At the end of the day, will I have a job? Will there be enough food for the family? Will the bill collector come calling again? Will my child be well? Will I be safe in my neighborhood? Will my marriage survive? These are real questions. We pray, we hope, we pray some more, we expect miracles and sometimes when things don't seem to work out the way we hope we are disappointed. Then we try again, but are disappointed again and we begin to lose hope. Then someone comes to you and says, cheerily, "Happy Easter!" And you think what hogwash! You are jaded.

In Jesus' time there were people who were jaded. You remember Mary. She came from a small Galilean village called Magdala. Here was a woman who had lost hope. Luke identified her as the woman from whom Jesus drove seven demons. She needed a deliverance. She was exiled from herself in seven different ways and desperately needed to come home. We don't know what those seven demons were. They could have been physical problems, mental concerns, moral issues, alcoholism, problems with her relationships with family and friends: in short, she was an oppressed woman. When you experience a complex web of problems, it is very difficult to get to the real issues that cause the problems, because you often end up dealing with the symptoms that need urgent attention. And of course, that's only a band aid -- and it won't give you any real healing and the problems go on and on. After a while, the inevitable happens, you loose hope. You get jaded.

But one day, she came to Jesus. I don't expect she came with any expectations. Jaded people are separated from themselves and from God, need desperately a deliverance and a homecoming. But their jadedness, itself, prevents them from hoping; so they don't even know it is possible to take that first step toward home and healing. They have been disappointed so much that rather than hope for a homecoming and healing and be disappointed and let down, they feel it's better not to go. Perhaps somebody forced her to go to Jesus. But Jesus surprised her. There she experienced healing. Not a band-aid healing, but a new sense of wholeness in her very being, in the depth. After all this time, she was liberated from her exile, and experienced a homecoming. That experience was so powerful that she became Jesus' follower, from Galilee to Jerusalem. With a kind of devotion that is given to one to whom you owe your life, Mary followed Jesus.

Being in the company of the other disciples and followers of Jesus, it would have been difficult for Mary not to get caught up in Jesus' teaching and preaching. The Kingdom of God was the kind of vision that even those who had been so jaded could not avoid getting excited about. May be she felt, as those who have suffered through difficult experiences and been healed often feel, how wonderful it would be if everyone else also have similar experiences. When you experience homecoming it is possible to hope even the most extravagant of hopes.

But then in Jerusalem, things began to take a bad turn. She couldn't understand it. Why were all these people who were so enthusiastic on the day of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, being so hostile, today? How is it that these same people who cheered him like a hero, had him arrested like a common criminal and crucified him. Why, O God, she may have thought, does the government execute innocent people? She probably hoped that he would somehow get out of it. Surely he would - he had to. But no. The reality dawned slowly on that Good Friday morning as she gathered with others at the foot of the cross. This was for real. Can you imagine how disappointment and grief would have come with renewed vigor? It would have felt like the hopes, dreams, visions were dashed on the ground. The old jadedness would have crept in with a greater force. Something would have told her, "I told you not to pin your hopes on this Jesus. It was too good to be true. Now, learn to look at life with jadedness. Don't hope. Just take what you can and survive. If you hope, you'll be disappointed."

But there was a spark of grace in Mary's life. She could have stayed home and covered herself up and be all depressed. God was still doing something in her life that would bring her to a place where she could experience grace. Some times I hear people say, I have such a lot of worries, anxieties, problems going on in my life, that I don't think I can go to church today. I tell you, that's precisely the day you need to be in a place where you can experience God's grace and healing. There was a spark of grace that pulled Mary out of bed that Sunday morning and brought her out to the tomb.

I imagine that when Mary came to the tomb early that Sunday morning, she came to anoint a dead body, and in doing so, symbolically to anoint her jadedness. To establish firmly in her mind, now that Jesus was no more, that she should return to a place where she'd have to survive, now even more jaded than ever, because this was the ultimate horrible experience. All her dreams, visions and hopes were gone. Just jadedness was left. But when she got there she found that the stone was removed. Now she felt worse than ever. She could not even anoint the dead body. Even that was a false hope. She could not even hope to the extent that she could expect to anoint her jadedness.........So what can she do, what can she do...? She can only cry, outside the tomb.

As she was crying, someone came behind her. She thought that this must be the gardener. Surely he would know what happened to his body. May be, she hoped, may be she could anoint her hopelessness after all, or better yet, take his body to make a memorial to her hopelessness: what a convoluted hope! So she asked, half afraid that she would get disappointed again, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." A familiar voice replied, "Mary." "Rabboni," she said and fell at his feet. Can you believe it? It was Jesus. He had risen. And again, Jesus brought her home. And what a homecoming!

With one word, just calling her by name -- and her world was transformed. She does not have to live in Good Friday any more. And praise the Lord, none of us who live in our Good Fridays are condemned to live in it forever. That's the good news of Easter.

On one Good Friday in a black Baptist Church, there were no less seven preachers preaching back to back. They were all great preachers and the congregation gave each one great encouragement. By the time they were coming down to the end and the sixth preacher had preached, there didn't seem to be anything more to say. Everything that needed to be said was now said. Then the old pastor got up and went up to the pulpit. He started softly -- you heard everything there is to be said. Now, I say to you, you may be living on Friday, but Sunday's coming." He understood this, you see. It may be Easter, but you are still struggling. One of the deacons yelled, "Preach Brother! Preach!" That was all the encouragement he needed. He came on louder as he said, "It was Friday and Mary was crying her eyes out. The disciples were runnin' in every direction, like sheep without a shepherd. But that was Friday, and Sunday's coming!" People in the congregation were beginning to pick up the message. Women were waving their hands in the air and calling out, "Well, well" Some men were yelling, "Keep going" He kept going. He picked up the volume a little bit more, "It Friday. The cynics were lookin' at the world and saying, "As things have been , so shall they be. You can't change anything in this world: you can't change anything." But those cynics didn't know it was only Friday! Sunday's coming!

He just getting more forceful as he went along. "It was Friday and on Friday Pilate thought he had washed his hands of a lot of trouble. The Pharisees were struttin' around, laughing and pokin' each other in the ribs. They thought they were back in charge of things, but they didn't know that it was only Friday! Sunday's coming! He just kept working that phrase until I don't thing that they could have stood it any longer. And at the end just yelled, "IT"S FRIDAY!" and all five hundred people in the church yelled back with on accord, "BUT SUNDAY'S COMING"

That's the Good news, folks. That is the word the world needs to hear. That's what those who are sick like Sabrina Crawford need to hear. That's what those who suffer enormous loss and are in deep pain and grief like Angela Leisure needs to hear. That's what poor communities like Over the Rhine in Cincinnati, which powerful people and institutions because of their greed and racism have kept poor and are facing the indignities of police brutality and racial profiling need to hear. That's what you who are struggling every day to make ends meet need to hear. That's what you who have lost hope need to hear. That is the word we need to hear when we feel that we will never know love again. That is what people need to hear when they have lost their belief in the miraculous so they no longer expect great things from God. We need to hear this word when we are overcome by the hunger, oppression and lack of justice around us. We need to hear that word which is our hope, our faith, and the source of our love. And praise God, there's still a spark of grace that God woke you up this morning and brought you to this place where you can hear this good news. It may be Friday, (everyone) BUT SUNDAY'S COMING

One more time -- Its Friday, -- But Sunday's Coming. In fact Sunday Is Here. Right now.

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I know that when you came here today, you are still dealing with Good Friday experiences. Your sin, your struggles, your sickness, your depression and oppression don't go away just because its Easter Sunday. There was a spark of God's grace that woke you up this morning and brought you here. Now, I am going to ask you to do one more thing. I know many of you have been to the empty tomb and have experienced the risen Lord, he has called you by name and has transformed your life. I also know that many of you have never come to the front of the tomb to express your guilt, your shame, your struggle, your need, your hopelessness. I want to invite you to come today, come up here to the front. Like Mary in front of the tomb, offer your struggle, your hopelessness to him.

And then experience Jesus come and speak to you by name.