Between the mysteries of death and life
Thou standest, loving, guiding, not explaining;
We ask, and thou art silent; yet we gaze,
And our charmed hearts forget their drear complaining.
No crushing fate, no stony destiny,
O Lamb that hast been slain, we find in thee!
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:13
All signs pointed to an unusually euphoric Easter.
“[T]he week began,” Pastor Oliver Ellsworth Daggett recalled, “with the ringing of bells, and roar of cannon, and waving of banners, and processions, prayers, addresses, and every spontaneous signal of patriotic hilarity, fitly crowned at night with such illumination as never flashed through our quiet village before.”
That “quiet village,” Canandaigua, New York, and its jubilant festivities were only a small part of something much larger. A few hundred miles away, in Philadelphia, Richard Eddy of First Universalist Church had foreseen “the brightest Easter sun that ever shone upon the earth….”
Palm Sunday had dawned with uncommon felicity, eager anticipation. “Our cup of happiness was well nigh full,” Eddy wrote.
Almost unbelievably, the week kept getting better. When Monday rolled around, “still more glorious tidings had come to us, and the joyous messages increased as each day brought us nearer to this day of blessed rest.”
The year was 1865. Robert E. Lee, leader of the Rebel Army, had surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, Palm Sunday. The news blasted around the country within a day, triggering ebullient celebrations and a much-needed revival of hope — hope that the mighty scourge of war had finally passed away. The fervent prayers of the people had at long last been answered.
But then Good Friday happened, and the “bells that had rung out so merrily tolled in lament.”
Abraham Lincoln was dead.
The news of the president’s passing — he had been murdered by the pro-Confederate sympathizer and actor John Wilkes Booth — punctured the nation’s joy like a sword through paper, plunging the erstwhile celebrants into a dark, moonless grief.
“Scarce had the terrible tidings flown upon the lightning’s wing through the loyal States, when, from millions of stricken hearts there went up to Heaven a bitter cry of anguish,–the pitiful moan of a crushed and bereaved people,” a Lincoln admirer described.
“Easter joys were turned into mourning, songs of thankfulness into notes of sadness and bereavement.”
Mark Twain, a man whose own tragic experiences gave rise to an increasingly embittered outlook on life, once accused God (in an unpublished manuscript) of performing a cruel bait-and-switch: teasing humans with false hopes only to magnify their pain when he strips them away. “When He seems to do [an act of kindness], it is a trap which He is setting,” he said.
Holy Week 1865 would have been a fascinating case study for Twain’s irreverent theory. From the Mountain Sinai of “patriotic hilarity,” joy, and, above all, peace, the nation tumbled back into the valley of yet another act of bloodshed — all within a week. Even the president had enjoyed a painfully short-lived reprieve from the melancholy that typically haunted him.
“I never saw him so supremely cheerful — his manner was even playful,” his wife described.
Alas, he had only hours left to live.
“[F]or the pilot who has steered the ship through such storms so near to the desired haven, to be struck down at the helm, by an assassin,” Daggett reflected, was an unbearable, unfathomable, seemingly senseless act of unmerited malice — the very thing Lincoln himself had sought to suppress.
So perhaps this old world was nothing but cruel, after all. Perhaps it was dictated by purely malevolent forces.
Or perhaps, as Honest Abe quoted from the Psalms in his Second Inaugural Address, “the judgments of the Lord,” though impenetrable and obscure, “are true and righteous altogether.”
Perhaps even a death as gratuitous as Lincoln’s was a part of a deeply meaningful plan.
Good Friday and Easter both point to the possibility, the hope, the faith that death itself can be redeemed, that even the grave can be made beautiful. Sacrifice — the lifeblood of servant leadership — is the only cure for a sick world. Soldiers, first responders, parents, and teachers must sacrifice to provide a better future for the next generation. Jesus Christ, the ultimate servant leader, died to provide a better future for every generation.
If no one is willing to sacrifice, this world would be a truly unbearable place. Fortunately, that’s not the case. The patriots at Concord Bridge stood their ground so that others might live. Lincoln was martyred for the liberty of millions of enslaved Americans and the preservation of the Union. The Son of God purchased eternal freedom at the price of his own blood. And thus, we have hope.
As a nation still grieving the loss of Charlie Kirk, not to mention the constant wars and rumors of war in the land where Jesus walked, knows all too well, death is unrelenting. The grave is ravenous. Easter, however, reminds us that no act of God is ever in vain. Even our Golgotha, the Place of the Skull, can be transformed into a radiant garden of new life.
That garden may not be ours to enjoy. Some men, after all, never see the fruit of their labor. But if such be our lot, may it be said of us that we were willing to sacrifice our own well-being for the sake of others.
The euphoria of Easter can continue, and it never has to die — not because death itself isn’t painful, but because, in spite of the tragedy, the risen Lord and Savior has shown us a flicker of the beauty yet to come.
“If now it be still asked again, as we have all asked, Why must the Chief Magistrate of this republic, in this day of triumph, fall by the hand of an assassin, and what are God’s designs in permitting it? I freely answer, I cannot tell; and just because I cannot, therefore the faith I have is not in events, but in God,” Daggett pronounced in his Easter Sunday sermon.
“Our country, the Union, human freedom, peace, do not depend on man, on Presidents, or Councilors, or Generals, except under God; and as surely as we are on his side, whatever may take place, He is with us, and will fashion and furnish his instruments, and agents.”