A Happy Ending

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene who was crucified. He is risen. See the place where they laid him.”
After the Lord Jesus spoke to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God.
Mark 16:6; 19


When I read I want a happy ending. I’m all for mystery, tension, and intrigue as the story builds but in the end I want everyone, or at least all the good guys, to have a positive conclusion. A lot of boy meets girl stories follow the same pattern, boy meets girl, boy loses girl through some flaw in one of them or crazy mix-up and then, boy regains girl and they live happily ever after. Okay fine, except for the part where boy loses girl for some contrived reason, or in a mystery where an innocent person is being punished for a crime they didn’t commit while the criminal walks free. Those are the parts I don’t like. In reading the Gospel I find the same anxious, oh no not this part, feel when I get to the section in all four where it says, “Triumphal entry.” That sounds positive but those of us who know the story know that right after that triumph comes the torture and the cross. I don’t like that part at all. I know it’s necessary and I am immensely grateful for it, I just feel horribly uncomfortable when I read it.

In the Gospel there is the most happy ending ever. Jesus rises from the grave. He is alive! He is free and by that act so are we. The ultimate happy ending! There is no more positive a conclusion than that one. Still to get there we have to go with Jesus through his dark night of the soul in the garden. We have to stand by helpless to change a thing, as he is questioned, beaten and humiliated. We have to envision the cross, the nails and as we do some of us feel a glimmer of that pain. Most of us see the injustice, the unfairness of beating and killing an innocent man. Nevertheless it is the pivotal point of the story. Without the Cross there is no resurrection, no amazing display of unconditional, without borders or prejudice, endless love. Reading those chapters, those conversations, makes me so sad, so uncomfortable. I want the happy ending. I want to turn to the last page and know that this sweet dear man, who is my favorite character in all the other stories of the book, will be okay. I want him to get the big prize, be the winner and receive some recognition.

There is a happy ending for sure, Jesus is alive and reigns in heaven with our Father. But, I have, we all have, a responsibility to make sure that he gets the big prize and receives the adoration and recognition he so richly deserves. Oddly, we, the people who put him through the parts I’d rather not read, are the prize. We are able to give him that adoration and recognition. We can be part of the happy ending. He doesn’t need us. He is perfect all on his own but for some reason, for which we should be ridiculously grateful, he wants us! And that, as a former pastor of mine used to say, is very Good News.

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