Easter Greetings to all. As we await the Easter joy of tomorrow, I reflect on "real life". Not the life we hope to live when we leave our earthly self but the only life we really know. This morning I thought a lot about Good Friday. Why "Good" Friday? The origin of the term "Good" is not clear. Some say it is from "God's Friday" (Gottes Freitag); others maintain that it is from the German "Gute Freitag". Sometimes, too, the day was called Long Friday by the Anglo-Saxons; so today in Denmark. We have had many very good Fridays in our life. Many of you have shared those Fridays with us. Friday, December 14, 2007 was not one of them. Many of you shared that Friday with us too.

Many of you have had your own "Good Fridays", days that are marked by sadness and despair. And many of you have experienced them more recently than us. Last year on Good Friday I was very angry. I believed that the suffering of Jesus we have heard about over our lifetime from the pulpit or in the classroom was really not that big of a deal. Crucifixion was horrid but compared to other ways that the Romans put people to death, only somewhere in the middle of cruel. And after all, Hank and so many other children afflicted with cancer or other disease suffered longer and just as cruelly if not more so. And there are so many others whose young lives are cut down even more viciously and unfairly that we read about every single day. Jesus was 33 when he was killed and Hank was just 14 when he died. How many others do not even see their 14th birthday? What made Jesus' story so amazing or special? Or Hank's?

So we await the Ressurection on Easter Saturday, 4-11-09, ( Those Darn numbers) maintaining a Vigil much like a modern day wake. Coincidentally, Henry was baptized on a Easter Saturday during an Easter Vigil service in 1993 that lasted so long that Grampa Tom had to sneak out more than once for a Marlboro. Interesting as well that Easter the year Hank was born, fell on 4/11/93. (Those darn numbers again) Is waiting for Jesus to resurrect akin to our own waiting for our loved ones to come back to us or for us to be reunited with them? Yet 3 days is a breeze compared to a lifetime of waiting. So we wait and remember and grieve but not as St. Paul wrote, "like those who have no hope".

Tomorrow when we visit Hank's grave we will not see the earth upturned as the stone was rolled away for Jesus' family and friends on that Sunday morning. There will simply be a stone that speaks of a mother's tears, and a stone that speaks of a father's pride. We will see the football sign with the number 41 on it and the baseball sign with the number 9 on it. There will not be an angel awaiting Susan's arrival to tell her not to be afraid, that Henry no longer lies here. There will be only small statutes of bears keeping watch over his grave. Did Jesus' Mother, Mary, grieve like mothers who have lost their children too young? Did his brothers and/or sister? Of course, they did. But like Jesus' friends and family who loved him came to mourn and remember him, there will be those who visit Hank's grave tomorrow and in the days to come who loved him deeply and not only mourn his loss daily but still feel his spirit and presence. And those friends and family will continue to tell others about Hank and how even in a small way he affects them and the way they live their lives. Many of those friends are those who pledged to keep his memory alive and to help others thru a Foundation ministry to help others afflicted with disease and sickness through no fault of their own or God's. Did Jesus' friends and family dream about him after He died and wonder how their lives would be different if he was still with them, eating and drinking at dinner, laughing and joking? I would think so. Did they share stories of how He made them laugh and how they never thought he would be the one to be taken away so early? I am sure of it. Not all of Jesus' friends and family saw Jesus again after he died, at least not in person. Did they believe anyway? Perhaps a failing of religion is that we are not taught enough about how our loved ones who die continue to live with us and can be seen in ways obvious and not so obvious. Isn't that what Jesus did? Though my heart breaks every day, I cannot say that Hank has disappeared from my life. I have shared many of those stories of his continued presence in our lives.

So we continue to live this life until the day when the all the stones are finally rolled away. And we will learn then, as Henry and so many of our loved ones have already learned, the meaning of "real life" as John Donne famously preached that, " We shall not live until we see God, and when we see Him, we shall never die." So say I. Happy Easter!