sola gratia

It’s Easter month, which means we’ll soon be rightly trumpeting that around which our faith revolves: the glory of resurrection.  The triumph of light over darkness.  The triumph of life—of God’s life—over death. But before we get there, we’ll encounter images and hear again stories that remind us of the profound humility and servant’s heart of the one we call the Christ.  We’ll watch as he enters Jerusalem not on a mighty steed but on a donkey.  We’ll listen as he shares a valediction, forbidding mourning, with his friends.  We’ll lament as one of his disciples betrays him, for the price of a slave, into the hands of those who’d have him killed.  We’ll recoil as he’s beaten and bloodied and hung on a cross.  And we’ll weep next to his mother and the Magdalene, and the few others who stayed to the end. Still there’s another image we’d do well not to miss—a scene that takes place in St. John’s gospel during Jesus’ final meal with his followers: one wherein he rises from the tab