Tom Hoopes gets it:
Holy Week does one thing better than any other event each year: It describes what hope looks like in the most desperate of times. It is the perfect antidote to election-year despair.
And he mentions something in particular which should be near and dear to the heart of deacons everywhere:
On Good Friday we will watch Jesus suffer the most complete defeat in the history of the world: The Second Person of Trinity as man will be spit on, slapped, dragged through the streets, killed, drained of blood, buried and locked in his tomb. But even sealing off his corpse couldn’t stop him. This Saturday we will hear what happened next: “Let this building shake with joy! … This is the night, when once you led our forebears, Israel’s children, from slavery in Egypt and made them pass dry-shod through the Red Sea. “This is the night that with a pillar of fire banished the darkness of sin. “This is the night that even now, throughout the world, sets Christian believers apart from worldly vices and from the gloom of sin. “This is the night, when Christ broke the prison-bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld. … O love, O charity beyond all telling, to ransom a slave you gave away your Son!” If that doesn’t give you heart in this year of the heart-breaking election, then nothing will. God has become man to die and rise for our sins. If that is true — and it is — then there is no call for despair.
Read it all. And be of good cheer. God is still in charge.
And today we celebrate...