Resurrected

Scripture says that Jesus can empathize with us in everything, because He suffered as we suffered - and I never feel it more than I do on Easter weekend. The betrayal He experienced at the hand of one of His closest friends, the physical, social, and emotional pain He endured on the Cross and road to Calvary, the denial coming from Him inmost circle, and the lack of His Father in His most needed time…I’m sure it comes off a bit sacrilegious, but I never feel closer to Jesus than I do during these three days.

Over a decade ago, I sat at a table in a Christian institution that preached Godly values as they read off the verdict that labeled my abuser as innocent. As they, without saying it, labeled me as the liar, the guilty party. 

Jesus looked down, watching as my best friends testified against me, picking the side of my abuser. My best friends, who’d once told me they believed me, and that they had been on my side. 

Like Judas, handpicked as His disciple, sold Him out to the enemy after believing in Him for so long. 

He looked down as a whole community lied and slandered me, crushing my spirit. 

Like the political officials, His friends, and even His family slandered Him throughout His whole ministry and Crucifixion. 

We were both brave (Him certainly more so), standing on trial in front of an institution meant to serve God, entangled in the politics of “How does this reflect our ‘upstanding’ community if we can’t make the situation just…go away?” 

We were both brave, and it wasn’t enough. We were both truthful, and all it did was cause death - social and emotional for me, and physical and spiritual for Him.

He watched my mentor lie to the committee, subsequently setting my abuser free.

Like the mentors He had growing up in Nazareth, who drove Him out, spit on Him, and spurned Him. 

We both worshipped in places that destroyed us. Neither one of us had our fathers when we needed them most. Neither one of us were believed. And though my road to Calvary was nothing like Jesus’s, I still dragged my own cross, scraped and bleeding and torn down to the shreds of my being, up my own road. 

My road was walking out of that room after being told, “I’m sorry if this is what happened to you, but there’s nothing else we can do,” and immediately seeing the mentor who cost me all of it. My road was every time I had to slip quietly into my dorm, avoiding my best friends and roommates who sided with my abuser, spreading vicious lies through the rest of my community. My road was the cop who blamed me for trusting my boyfriend, and then told me there was no point in pressing charges. My road was leaving that police station knowing that I’d probably made the worst choice of my life. It was the whispers and the bullying and the hatred of those but a scarce few that finally drove me to drop out and move home. 

But as Carman sang in my favorite-ever Easter song,

Sunday was on the way.

Through His physical death and resurrection, He fulfilled His purpose to save all of humanity. My own resurrection was far less dramatic, of course, but it happened nonetheless. It came in the way of the friends who did believe me, and did stick by me. It came through my childhood friend Morgan, and even one of my professors - both of whom came to the trials with me, refusing to abandon me like everyone else. 

And it came still, years later, through being able to trust someone again - even enough to marry them - and risk every one of my greatest fears of intimacy and fellowship. 

I never feel more empathized with than I do by Jesus during this time of suffering and celebration. No, my “Easter weekend” didn’t come close to the suffering Jesus experienced, but it’s always a painful yet beautiful reminder that He gets my suffering. He gets yours, too.