I read the cover story in the recent New York Times magazine last night, and while it was about golf, Tiger Woods, bubbles and the economy, I smelled Easter. And not just because it’s now deep in Holy Week.

Here’s a quote: "All economic bubbles begin with a fervent faith in the transformative potential of something. As the bubble inflates, demand grows and the optimism of the early evangelists becomes contagious, converting more believers and steamrollering scrutinizers and cynics. But at some point the momentum shifts. Economic reality quickly catches up with the pervasive overconfidence that first set the bubble aloft, and it bursts."

It’s not just the religious language this writer uses that makes me think of the Christian faith, and how the church year sweeps us along from Jesus’ birth and revolutionary ministry into the darkness of Good Friday, the miracle of Easter, and the widening influence of Pentecost. There are similarities in the type of movement the writer describes and in our faith journeys… but only up to a key moment.

With bubbles, they end, permanently. They can’t be sustained. The “momentum shifts” and the source of power is revealed to be standing on sand.  Not because “change happens,” but because the basis of the belief and the excitement was not solid to begin with.

Not so with Easter. That journey takes us to the place of a tomb, a seeming ending, and then beyond it. All the momentum of Jesus’ followers does indeed deflate on Good Friday. We have all been there:  a hope fades, a job is lost, a marriage dies, a friend betrays.  The empty tomb says to us:  The seeming ending is actually part of a new beginning; the journey is not over. Something has not burst; it has transformed.

I don't pretend this is not hard to fathom. Each of us grapples with the Easter mystery in our own way:  hope, disbelief, patience, exuberance. We may sense Easter tomorrow, or it may not make itself fully manifest till July. Breathe into it, all 50 days of it—it's a whole church season. Trust it. Pray—and play—with it. I’ll be looking at some of the images and invitations of Easter on April 11th at the 1:30 Adult Education class—please come or watch online. For now, let us wait for, and rise into, the light of new life.