Celebrating Easter at Christmas

Take a life-transforming walk through the intertwined stories of creation week and Good Friday. How do Christ's seven last sayings on Calvary intersect with the seven days of creation? Explore how ancient words can revive us each day.

I am celebrating Good Friday at Christmas this year. Last night I typed the last words in a new book that has been my first thought in the morning and last thought at night for some time now. Several months ago, a conversation with a young colleague triggered a stream of contemplation and study that is enriching my “semi-retirement.”

I began writing When Words Become Life: Seven Days and Seven Sayings that Changed the Universe just a few weeks before Thanksgiving. Throughout this holiday season, I’ve often found myself moved to tears of deep joy and gratitude for the things that God has been sharing with me. Many times in the midst of other activities, I could hardly wait to reengage this story, so strong was Christ’s appeal to my own heart. Never before have I felt so driven to complete a manuscript in such a short time. When Words Become Life will be released by early-February on Amazon Books. I am profoundly grateful that I can soon share the story of Calvary and Creation with you in a way that has refreshed my own soul after four decades in a ministry that has included four thousand weddings and attendance at over a thousand deaths.

I wrote When Words Become Life for those who are tired of clichéd religion and diluted explanations of the Gospel. It is a book that, I believe, will be a blessing to anyone who wants to strengthen personal understanding and application of Christ’s Good Friday message. Contemplation and study questions are included at the end of each chapter to enhance personal and group maturation.

Individuals and congregations may also use the book as part of a countdown to Easter Sunday. Again, I plan to have the book available on Amazon Books by early-February. Mark you calendars now to obtain your copy (or copies!). Below is the excerpted introduction to When Words Become Life

A Thousand Deaths and More

The whooshing sound grew to a deep, steady hum, causing me to glance back over my shoulder at a gaunt man in a white clinical shirt. He gripped a large hose with two gnarled hands, applying its serpentine mouth to a stone slab. Sucking sounds pulsed through the vaulted flesh-colored concrete chamber as his vacuum devoured the residual ashes of someone whom I had known only for a few short years.

By the time I met Dr. T she had already gained international acclaim as a pioneering educator of women. Mutual friends told me of how universities in America, Europe and her Japanese homeland showered her with honorary degrees and awards for her contributions to the training of healing professionals. Yet, in her later years, nothing mattered more to her than reconnecting with the faith of her youth.

 She was often found sitting week after week on a thinly cushioned church pew at the church where I was a young, yet-to-be ordained American missionary pastor, interning under the leadership of a Japanese colleague. This prim and proper elderly woman moved slowly each week down the church’s center aisle to find her chosen place within her reclaimed church family.

For my three-year-old son Andrew, Dr. T was a frequent focus of curiosity as she entered church wearing her traditional Japanese kimono. Each garment was always elegant and firmly held in place by a finely spun silk obi wrapped several times around her midsection and tied intricately behind her back. She accessorized this finery with furs during Sapporo’s cold, icy winter months.

 One memorable morning when snow and ice covered the streets, Dr. T entered church with a mink stole wrapped around her neck. The beady-eyed head of the lifeless creature rested upon her neck. Andy squirmed in his seat, twisting around to watch her entrance. Entranced, his loud whisper penetrated a pause between hymns, “Look, Daddy, a skunk!”

Ripples of laughter. Red faced parents. A hint of a smile on Dr. T’s ancient face. Mink or skunk? Does it matter? In the face of such beady-eyed intrigue, who can make sense of it all?

Sometimes we laugh to keep from crying. Back in the crematorium where Dr. T was reduced to ashes, I pondered what I experienced. When I first arrived at the memorial site, I was invited into a circle of Dr. T’s friends. Sitting on a tightly woven grass tatami floor, I listened to a robust sharing of memories as we ate rice crackers and sweet cakes and sipped tea. At last a funeral director came to call us. “Mou dekiagarimashita (she’s done)” he said, using the identical expression that a baker might use to signal that his bread is finished. He directed us to follow him into a long, high-ceilinged room where he swung open a waist-high, heavy steel door, one of many in the wall, and pulled out a stone tongue several meters long.

He then molded the mourners into a half circle facing the gaping body-to-ashes cauldron. A head-to- toe cartoon of life appeared before me - the shape of Dr. T without her essence. Acrid heat sprang at me as I was handed a set of chopsticks. Together we transferred ashes and more ashes from chopstick to chopstick to chopstick, gradually placing Dr. T’s fragile, powdery remains into a simple stone urn at the table’s end.

Then, there among the ashes, one mourner’s chopsticks plucked out a safety pin, bent slightly by the heat. “Now we know what held her together,” he quipped. Macabre humor, triggering chuckles! Then a watch was pulled out, its hands frozen in time. “Time stops,” another friend said, “but God grants eternity!”

Since that day in the crematorium on the far northern island of Japan, I have attended well over a thousand deaths as a pastor and hospital chaplain. I’ve sat with dying hospice patients in their homes, prayed for wisdom with families in an Intensive Care Unit as they faced tough choices, and notified family members of the sudden, seemingly senseless death of a beloved son in an emergency department. I’ve seen that no matter how frequent the losses or how much death is anticipated, we all strive to experience something beyond the pain, something that transcends.

That is what this book is about. Herein you will see how our deepest needs intersect with hope. Together we will trace three converging, intertwined threads. 

One strand is a day-by-day adventure through the seven days of creation week, and the second is a contemplative cord that takes us through Jesus’ final hours at Golgotha, “the Place of the Skull.” The third fiber is the salvation-binding promise of the Spirit of God. We will see how these three strands - the seven days of creation, the seven last sayings of Jesus, and the manifestation of the Holy Spirit - draw us upward to anchor points in heaven.

This is a journey where one end of the braided rope is secured above and the other is tied always to Mount Calvary, the pivot point of the Gospel Story.

Along the way, you will hear God say, “It is finished!” Not once, but three times! Once on Calvary, once in heaven, and then again once more on earth. When the “It is finished!” of Calvary meets the “It is finished” of heaven and of God’s New Creation, “it” will truly be over. Step by step, ask yourself, what is the “it” that you want to be finished within your personal life?

Do you strive for meaning and purpose? Is that the “it” that impinges on your self-esteem?

Do you struggle with broken relationships, perhaps with a son, daughter or spouse? Is there an estrangement that you want healed?

Do you need forgiveness? From God? From family? From friends? From yourself? Is that the “it” that saps life from you? 

Is there a cacophony of despair within you, so much so that life feels pointless? Is that the “it” that makes you eat too much or too little, or sleep endlessly or not at all? Does the “it” of hopelessness make you think that life has no value, that you don’t matter?

Oh, but you do matter!

Tom Becraft is a life-long learner whose heart has been moved and filled again and again by God’s love; he is passionate about experiencing God’s promises as a way of life and sharing them in non-coercive ways whenever and wherever possible.

Tom spent more than four decades serving as a church and campus pastor, assistant professor of practical theology, and as a Board Certified hospital chaplain, before entering into semi-retirement earlier this year. In addition to providing occasional per diem chaplaincy coverage at several hospitals, he now spends time “working” with words, camera and woodworking tools whenever he is not spending time with his wife, children and grandchildren.

You can find links to many previous postings on his LinkedIn home page.

Tom has written four previous books - two in the Japanese language and two in English. Crossing the Bridge: A Guide to End-of-Life Issues received the 2011 Planetree Award for Spirituality and Diversity. This was followed in 2014 by A Bamboo Grove for the Soul: A Storybook of Spiritual Resources for Caregivers, which has become required reading in university classes for ministerial candidates and others who are entering healing professions. A Bamboo Grove is currently available on Amazon Books for a good year-end discount.