Celebrating in the Midst
A scene from Katherine’s first-ever “brokenness brunch”, where five friends gathered in our home to eat good food and share hard stories.
“Celebration can be an act of worship and an act of hope and perhaps, in a way, an act of joyful rebellion against fear. It’s about remembering our future. It’s about believing that even if our plates are empty for a while, we’ll still have a table to place them on until they can be filled again.”
Suffer Strong, “Redefining Celebration: Joyful Rebellion”
Celebration, in conventional thinking, commemorates positive progress, material gain, or a goal attained. Celebration is a manifestation of joy and an acknowledgement of provision. What kind of person would celebrate in the midst of loss?
As Pope John Paul II famously said, “Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people, and ‘Alleluia!’ is our song.” The former Pope recognized the core identity of Jesus-followers as ones who live in the reality of resurrection, both the eternally resounding effects of Jesus’s resurrection, as well as the daily opportunities for new life we encounter if only we choose to see them. It follows that being an Easter people inherently means being a Good Friday people.
To practice resurrection, we must intimately know the prerequisite loss and death.
Our minds are confined to a linear temporal perception in which we can only see pain, emptiness, and despair in a present experience of loss. We can’t jump ahead to see resurrection, and we often fail to reflect on how our previous suffering contributed, ultimately, to new life. Enormous energy is required of us to acknowledge God’s provision in our past experiences of loss, and considerable faith is required of us to trust that God’s presence has already permeated our future experiences of loss.
When we feel like Jesus’s friends on the day of his excruciating death—bereaved by the loss of their beloved and by the loss of their worldview—it may be difficult to rely on God’s past provision or his future presence in our situations. On these days, we can always take hold of our identity as Easter people, people who know in their bones that there is life beyond the cross and hope beyond Good Friday. When we can’t tap into resurrection hope from our own experiences, we are invited to rely on the true story of Jesus’s second-chance life.
We are human, a condition that makes feeling true joy or peace nearly inaccessible on our darkest days, even with the knowledge of the Easter story. We cannot simply hope to catch a fleeting inspiration to celebrate resurrection amidst loss.
We must approach celebration as a spiritual discipline, a rebellious act of worship we practice on the good days, the hard days, and the ordinary days.
When we’ve spent time earnestly rehearsing a spiritual response, it becomes a part of who we truly are. With the ingrained discipline of sacred celebration, we can live and respond from a place of truth, rather than a place of regret or despair.
If our faith tradition is built around a death and resurrection, we consent to believing that beautiful growth follows the greatest loss. As we walk through our deepest losses, let us remember the universe-changing alchemy of Jesus, who transformed his death into life for every one of us. We will celebrate what’s possible in our losses because of his resurrection.
A Benediction: God, some days I feel hollow inside. My hard work doesn’t seem to bear fruit. New problems arise every minute and no one seems to care. Give me eyes to see your provision in my past so I can anticipate the future harvest with hope. I can’t do it on my own, so I’m asking you to help me sing your praise, to resolve not only to survive but to thrive in this season of drought. Because you’re my friend, I need not wait to celebrate.
Inspired by Habakkuk 3:17-18)
