Easter without Good Friday risks sentimentality and vacuity. It becomes an affirmation that spring follows winter, life follows death, flowers will bloom again, and it is time for bonnets and bunnies. But Easter as the reversal of Good Friday means God’s vindication of Jesus’s passion for the kingdom of God, for God’s justice, and God’s “no” to the powers who killed him, powers still very much active in our world. Easter is about God even as it is about Jesus. Easter discloses the character of God. Easter means God’s Great Cleanup of the world has begun—but it will not happen without us.
