I’ve been thinking a lot about life and worship lately. Reading the book Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations has caused me to think about the place and role of worship in our lives. I have come to believe that there is a recipricol relationship between life and worship. Worship is not an option for us. We will worship. The question is what, whom, how, when and where will we worship? Over the course of my life I have worshipped in cathedrals great and churches small. I’ve smelled incense burn, listened to monks chant and struggled to see through the shadows and I have been blinded by the bright lights of a fifteen thousand seat arena and listened as a band played and sang, “the devil went down to Georgia, he was looking for a soul to steal, he was in a bind ’cause he was way behind, he was willing to make a deal.” I’ve been in gatherings where I was one of the only white people there and in gatherings where I was one of the only straight people there, in gatherings where I did not understand the language or know when to sit, stand or kneel, and in gatherings where I was able to speak the liturgy almost from memory. I’ve gone forward and received wine from a common cup that was hundreds of years old and sat in my seat sipping grape juice from a small plastic disposable cup that was purchased the day before. I’ve heard great preaching in unexpected places that made the worship experience even better and poor preaching in unexpected places that took a bit of the shine off of a worship experience that otherwise sparkled. From each of these experiences I have learned that worship requires passion – “caring enough to offer our best, our utmost, our highest.” And so it is with life. Life requires passion, because “without passion, life becomes dry, routine, boring, predictable, having form but lacking spirit.” So it is with worship, so it is with life. Both require passion.

Easter means different things to different people. For some, it’s all about the candy – chocolate bunnies, cream-filled eggs, marshmallow peeps and multi-colored jelly beans – Easter baskets filled to the brim with all kinds of sugar coated, calorically insensitive, taste-bud tingling treats sure to satisfy the kids among us and the kids within us. For others, Easter is about new clothes – a new dress, a new suit, a new pair of shoes. For many, still, Easter is about going to church, the first leg of the “cultural christian trifecta” – Easter, Mother’s Day and Christmas Eve. For some, Easter is about claiming and proclaiming good news in and to and world where the news is often anything but good.

On the Saturday before Easter, I found myself outside. It was a gloriously beautiful day. I took a break from working in the yard and sat down to read the paper. Page after page, I read news that was anything but good – severe flooding in the Midwest, more dead soldiers in Iraq, the collapse of another investment bank, and a somber article claiming that we are on the verge of the deepest recession since World War II. I was reminded that we do indeed live in a Good Friday world. So often we lack sufficient understanding to make sense out of the unfolding events of our lives. Hopes and dreams are often met with disappointment. Changing economic realities either create or eliminate opportunities for us. Uncertain times foster fear. How easy it is to become overwhelmed by the natural emotions that result from loss, whether it is the loss of loved ones or friends, identity or incentive, the loss of jobs, health, mobility, mental or physical abilities. Pain and suffering affect us all, no matter who we are, where we’re from, or what path we choose in life. No amount of money or success, education or accomplishment can shield us from the Good Friday moments in life.How often have we lost hope, given up, let go of the promise and travelled down the path of despair? How often has cynicism dominated our thinking? How often has selfishness stolen our joy? How often has jealously soured our spirit? How often have each of us buried the alleluias without ever setting foot inside the church? As Hemingway once wrote, “Life breaks us all; some of us grow strong at the broken places.”

But, as the spiritual reminds us, “it’s Friday, but Sunday’s comin‘.” We claim an Easter faith in the midst of a Good Friday world, a faith that gives us a new perspective from which to view the world. In spite of the bad news that dominated the headlines of the day, it was as if the world around me began to testify to the hope and promise of Easter – buds awakening from the dormancy, leaves breaking through the bark of resistance, blooms beckoning me to witness their beauty, green grass chasing the dark of doubt away, inviting me to join in a song of the season, “I wanna’ soak up the sun, I want to tell everyone who lights my way.”

Easter procalims good news in a world filled with bad news. Easter reveals to us who lights the way by proclaiming to us that God stares death in the fact and says, “Not on my watch!” Easter reveals to us that God is in the business of rolling stones away, even from the tombs in our own lives, tombs dug by disillusionment and despair, hurt and heartache, loneliness and loss, and shares with us that God gives each of us a new song to sing when the same old sad songs just don’t seem to say it anymore.

And that is news worth remembering.