We’re entering the fifth week of Lent. The further we go into Lent, the more I’m sad for the churches that skip this penitential season, electing to go straight to Easter. They’ll have missed a critical view of the empty tomb.

The Gospel should always be a church’s center. That said, one of the grand benefits of observing church seasons is that they provide us with different perspectives on the Gospel. Advent considers it one way. Epiphany another. Rather than letting us coast along thinking we know everything there is to know, church seasons lift the Gospel and turn it, allowing examination on all sides. Lent is no different. If observed rightly, Lent, and then Holy Week, deliver us to the Lord’s resurrection, having first shown us the cost of Easter’s joy. Holy Week—the days between Palm Sunday and Easter—dig so incredibly deeply in this regard. It needs to. Humanly speaking, we’d much rather come to worship on Palm Sunday and then again at Easter. We’d much rather enjoy these brighter festivals, having skipped the hours of terribleness that cement the two together.

Why is this? My first guess is that the sinful nature would prefer to keep its role in the narrative a secret. It knows that if we investigate the harder scenes, there’s a chance we’ll be shocked by what we discover—perhaps even learning something about ourselves we’d prefer not to know. These reasons feed my appreciation of the masters—Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and the like. They looked into these spaces and shared the details. A more recent master, Carl Bloch, handled the details well, too. Perhaps you’ve seen his portrait of Christ being comforted by the angel in Gethsemane (Luke 22:43)? Far too many images of Christ in the garden before His betrayal are portrayed with the preferred fluffiness of gilded rays pouring from heaven, Jesus intently meditating but untouched by sadness. But that’s not what the Scriptures describe. They describe intense sadness. Bloch captures the Lord’s physical exhaustion and the angel that came to bolster Him for the forthcoming fight.

Lent and Holy Week insist, “Don’t look away. Behold the bludgeoned and pathetic Christ. Indeed, it’s startling that He would suffer and die in this way. You’ve heard so often how He did it for you. Do you see what ‘for you’ means? Let your unsettled heart be a clue.”

Of course, that’s not the end of the story. Lifting the Lententide narrative and turning it for a better view, Luther continued that the Lord’s startling grief is also filling in confidence’s terrible gaps, becoming “a comfort to you, that you may be certain that Christ has taken your sin upon Himself, and paid the price for it. If, then, your sins are laid on Christ, be content. They lie in the right place, where they belong” (Ibid.).

Still, there’s the startling nature to all of this.

The topic of abortion came up during our church’s School Board meeting this past Tuesday. Relative to what we were discussing, I mentioned to the Board that I’m one who believes that the only way to end abortion once and for all would be to require our populace to see it—to experience the sights, sounds, and smells of genocide, much like the Allied troops marched Germany’s complacent citizens through the concentration camps after World War II. Changes in heart and mind occurred almost instantaneously in Germany. My theory, which I cannot necessarily prove, is that while incremental behavioral conditioning works, there’s a layer of our being that can only be pierced by jarring news. In a sense, the Bible does both. So much of the Lord’s comings and goings in the Bible are given in ways that caress us to careful attention. In a purely human sense, we’re being incrementally habituated to His identity and what He has come to do. But then there’s the actual doing—the viciousness of His suffering and death. The events themselves are anything but careful. They were a swift and consolidated shotgun blast of dreadfulness. Mark’s Gospel says the Lord was betrayed at midnight on Thursday, while Matthew, Mark, and Luke record the Lord died about the ninth hour, or 3:00 pm, on Friday. Compared to the rest of the Lord’s ministry, there’s very little time to be eased into it.

While it might not be the best analogy, this reminds me of something W.H. Auden wrote about stark incentives. I’ve been reading and writing about the psychology of attitudinal shifts for my doctoral work. Auden agreed that behavioral conditioning had a proven record. But then he joked that with a few select drugs and a simple electrical appliance, he could have almost anyone reciting the Athanasian Creed in public, and he could produce the results far more quickly than any behaviorist. Of course, he was talking about torturing someone into compliance. But beneath his dark comedy lies an elementary truth: extreme experiences have a way of cutting through our protected selves, revealing what might otherwise remain hidden to us, ultimately passing us by.

If Easter greeting cards draped in sunshine, lilies, empty crosses, and empty tombs are all one knows of the Lord’s passion, then something incredibly important has been overlooked.

I guess I’m saying this morning that Lent and Holy Week play an essential role in preventing a superficial understanding of the Lord’s labors. They were jarring, and much of these penitential seasons’ collegial goal is to remind us that redemption came at a cost, that its price tag was attached to a world-sized pile of human brokenness, and then to show us the price was paid in full. From there, the startling image becomes one of genuine comfort. A crucified Jesus is a testament to the unfathomable depths of God’s mercy. His resurrection becomes an indescribable celebration worthy of a joyful ruckus. Skipping over the precision of Lent and Holy Week risks missing this.

Don’t miss out. Start making plans now, especially for Holy Week. Here at Our Savior, we’ll have services every day, sometimes twice daily. If you do not have a church home, or perhaps your church offers little opportunity to observe the harder things, feel free to join us. You are more than welcome. Listen to God’s Word and its preaching. By these things, look into the challenging moments. Measure sin’s cost. Be equipped for another startling of sorts.

In other words, no one goes to someone’s tomb who has been viciously mauled expecting to find that person restored and alive. And yet, we do. We behold and hear Easter’s cosmic announcement that the One who suffered and died so gruesomely is now alive, never to die again, His resurrection victory being ours by faith. Talk about shocking! Indeed, it’s the overwhelming sense of joy that the Easter celebration means to bring.