Bishop Andrew Asbil has shared a message for Holy Week and Easter. You can find the video and the full text below.
There’s something intimate about taking a walk. It’s a slower, more deliberate way to see the world. You feel the pavement, the slush and salt under your feet. You see the sun glint off windows, notice a neighbour’s new fence, take in the smell of spring around the corner. You fall into the rhythm of the people around you. You might even smile at a stranger as they pass by.
And walking together with someone requires a certain amount of attention. You match your stride with theirs and adjust your pace as, sometimes without words, you travel along a certain path to a shared destination.
One of the Holy Week customs many parishes share is Stations of the Cross. In that time between the Hosannahs of Palm Sunday and the Hallelujahs of Easter, quiet groups shuffle along from station to station, up aisles and into transepts, squeezing into corners and clustering around icons that may be ornate works of art or may be simple papers taped up for the occasion.
Countless Christians have found solace and comfort in this act of walking together. In our own diocese, the annual Good Friday Walk for Justice traced a route through the wealth and power of downtown Toronto to call attention to some of the worst injustices in our society. The community of All Saints, Sherbourne has marked the Way of the Cross in the Opioid Crisis, stopping and praying in places where people have died of overdoses, and remembering Christ’s solidarity with all who suffer.
Together, we walk in Jesus’ footsteps, bearing witness to his last day – his betrayal, his condemnation, his steps through the streets of Jerusalem, his death on the cross. Station by station, we journey with Christ in his suffering. We go down with our Saviour into his tomb, and we take the time to sit in that place of darkness.
We know what darkness feels like. People without homes find meagre shelter on streetcorners, in parks and alleyways. Our mental health is threadbare, as these three years of pandemic give way to rising food costs and acts of violence that shake our sense of safety. In too many ways, society seems to be stretched thin, pushed to the brink. We have scars left by Covid, and some that go much farther back. The old way of doing things is faltering, and maybe never really worked all that well.
We sit in the dark place. But we know the tomb is not the end of the story. On the third day, in the morning, the sun rises to reveal the stone rolled away. The light breaks through into the darkness and shines on something extraordinary – an empty tomb. And a message that awaits us: He is risen.
The tears of grief and despair are transformed into shouts of joy. The oppressive darkness of Friday is banished. Death is not the end of the story after all. Early on that Easter morning, when the women walked to the place where Jesus had been laid, they expected to find nothing but darkness and death. And instead they found a new road to walk on – the road of God’s redeeming love.
He is risen. And we are called to respond. To move, in our life together, from darkness to light, from the sorrow of death to the joy of everlasting life. In defeating death, Jesus has given to us the gift of an unceasing source of hope. God has destroyed those things that keep us from him and shown us what is possible through God.
What rises within us in response to this earth-shattering, death-destroying truth? How does it change us? How are we made different, as a people redeemed by such a great and wondrous love? How much more can we do – how can we walk together differently – on this new path that Christ has opened for us? A new way and a new life, lit by God’s love for us.
On this most joyous day of days, I invite you to let the joy of Easter burst out of you. Yes, the world is full of brokenness, pain and despair. But… Evil will not prevail. Sin and darkness and death do not have the last word: Christ wins. Life defeats death. Walk around today and see the world through eyes renewed by Joy. God’s world is redeemed. And it is beautiful and holy. Rejoice! Again I say, rejoice!
