We Choose in the Dark

A Maundy Thursday meditation on betrayal, courage, and what resurrection demands of us.

As Easter approaches and the daily dismantling of our American Experiment continues, I find myself pondering the moments in our Christian story when the darkness had seemingly overtaken the light. The truth is, I am always pondering this as we get to Maundy Thursday and the journey through betrayal, arrest and trial, the beating and torture of the cross. I am always pondering the truth of the tomb, the terror, and the time between what was and what would be. This, for me, is always the journey of Holy Week.

And yet, this year feels far more pensive, far more poignant, far more precarious—as we watch people with legal status being whisked to a proxy gulag in El Salvador (ironically named after Jesus). It is terrifying to see citizens returning from vacations back to the U.S. stopped at the border and detained simply because of a tweet or a client or an identity. It is beyond comprehensible to hear the President declare “enemies of the state” anyone who disagrees o

16th Century Crucifixtion

r seeks to uphold the law in the face of this crucifixion of our democracy.

I hear Peter’s words: “I don’t know him!”—his desperate denial when pressed by onlookers. The very one who declared Jesus “Lord” betrays the relationship to save his own skin. At least Judas didn’t deny the relationship. But Peter, the so-called Rock, chose survival over the chance to witness to the love that Jesus taught. He could have turned the crowd back toward liberation. But he didn’t.

As the hours before the darkness speed on, I am compelled by the ways students and professors are standing up when smeared with accusations of antisemitism for declaring that Palestinians are worthy of existence. I see them demanding the release of their friends who have been “detained” for speaking on behalf of life. They are doing what Peter did not. They are saying no to the soul-crushing tactics of Empire, just as Jesus did in his day. They do not cry “Save us!” (Hosanna) to their colleagues imprisoned in Vermont or Alabama. Instead, they speak with the clarity of Ray Charles: “None of us are free if one of us is chained.” They understand that true resistance is communal, not passive.

And yet we know the story gets darker.

There is betrayal. Violence. The public example made to shut down dissent. We know both Pilate and Herod will do what they do to save their own skins. We know the religious leaders aligned with Rome did the same. We know people rationalized, justified, and explained the choice to torture and kill an innocent man (I wonder if his tattoos made him easier to condemn) as the path of least resistance.

And in this darkness, even in the face of his arrest, Jesus healed the man whose ear was cut off as his friends tried to resist. Even in the face of torture, Jesus prayed that God would forgive his torturers. Even in the face of death, he came back to say, “You are better than this. Your worst decision doesn’t have to define you. You can still try again. Follow me.”

So on this Day of Shadows, this moment of pensive, poignant precarity, we enter into the choice-point that can only happen in the dark. It is a moment when we cannot see what will result from our choices. And yet, we know we must choose. It is a moment when we must decide who our role models will be. Pilate? Herod? Peter? The crowd? The Marys? Jesus himself?

It is a moment when we discover what an Easter Faith is really all about—not the comfort of pastel rituals, but the courage to believe that love still rises—and calls us to rise with it.

Alleluia! Christ is Risen! Christ is rising still.