It’s Friday night. We want Sunday to come soon and so badly. First, we’ve got to get through this dark night.

Jesus taught us how to do many things. Jesus taught us about social justice and then turned his sermon into action by teaching us by his own actions us how to care for the disenfranchised. Jesus taught us that faith is an adventurous journey that lasts a lifetime. Jesus taught us how to answer questions about faith with more questions so that when someone finally discovers the answer, it’s not the answer someone just gave them, thereby teaching us that our faith must become our own.

Jesus also taught us how to forgive . . . how to forgive those who hurt us and those who won’t forgive us when we have hurt them. He taught us, young ministers, how to forgive those who call themselves Christians but treat us with anything but Christian compassion. Jesus taught us how to respond with compassion and empathy and never with judgment.

Jesus taught us to constantly look for ways to restore dignity to those from whom society has stolen it because of their race, their religious persuasion and even their sex. No one did more to elevate the role of women than did Jesus. Jesus taught us how to speak truth to power. He taught us how handle rejection, the most painful kind, when you offer someone your gift and they refuse it. In short, Jesus taught us to live as people of the kingdom of Eternal God.

Most of all, Jesus taught us how to get through Friday night on the way to Sunday. Having taught us all he did, Jesus would now teach us how to die. "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit."

From the beginning, Jesus taught us to think of indescribable holiness as . . . our Father. Now, he goes a step further by talking about his Father’s hands. "Into your hands," he said to his father. That’s how Jesus thought of dying, as just lying back in his father’s hands. Not a bad way to think about dying. We’re so afraid of dying. Should we be?

I remember my father’s hands. Do you? I try to keep in mind that some people have no father’s hands to remember. I think of my little orphan friends in Latvia who have never known the touch of a father’s hands. Children who, more than they want toys and clothes and sometimes even food, mostly just want the dignity of being touched and held.

I also think tonight of those whose memories of a father’s hands are not memories of compassion but of abuse and even violence. Frankly, if I were preaching this message to those dear people, I don’t know how I would encourage them to think hopefully about death in relationship to a loving father’s hands. Yet, my Easter hope is that, in the Kingdom of God, all God’s children will someday know the touch of their heavenly Father’s hands.

That’s how Jesus taught us to die. Just by lying back and letting go, into our Father’s hands.

There are times to forgive and times to speak truth to power and even stand in the way of the tanks in Tiananmen Square. Then, as Ecclesiastes tells us, there is a time to speak and a time to be silent, a time to live and a time to die. Now, Jesus becomes our teacher yet again. When it’s time to die, it’s time to just let go, into our father’s hands.

I have faint memories of learning to water ski. Do you remember when you first learned? Do you remember one of the first things you are taught when you are learning to ski is how to fall? Do you remember the first lesson on how to fall? Let go of the rope! That doesn’t mean falling isn’t going to hurt. Traveling thirty miles per hour across the water and then falling does things to you anatomically that would make a pretzel proud. It’s just that letting go is going to hurt a whole lot less than holding onto the rope and letting the boat drag you across the lake like a used rag doll.

This is especially important tonight. The only way Easter Sunday happens is if we let go on Friday. Letting go is easy when holding on is so obviously going to kill you. It’s letting go of what we think we can’t live without that is so troubling, a dream, a relationship, a possession. Yet, the reason Easter is sometimes such a terrible letdown is because we awake on Monday only to realize that we’re still holding onto Friday and Sunday never got to happen. Living again, the resurrection to new life, is about letting go of Friday’s unforgiveness, greed, pride, prejudice, whatever . . . so that we can see Sunday’s glory. New life is about letting go of whatever’s keeping you from going inside the tomb to see for yourself what happens when the angel rolls back the stone. You want Easter to happen Sunday? You have to let go on Friday!

It’s Friday night. Will Sunday come for you?

We’ll see!