Loving Spoilers on Easter

My wife, Mindy, likes to reread books—a lot. She has read the novel The Shuttle by Francis Hodgson Burnett almost every year for decades. She reads The Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson at the start of every baseball season.

As for me and fiction, I’m pretty much one and done. Other than fiction by C. S. Lewis, I usually don't go back to novels. Once I know the story, when there won’t be any surprises, I won’t go back.

That is not how Mindy reads. She is not one for surprises. When reading a mystery… well, any book, really, she will skip ahead to the end to see how it turns out. To see if she wants to plow her way through the book. Which she almost always does.

And it’s not just books. When we start a movie at home, she’ll go to the plot summary on Wikipedia to decide if she’ll be watching or reading something. This is so foreign to me. She doesn’t try to avoid spoilers; she actively seeks them out.

Why do I bring this up on Easter, of all days? Because Jesus was the King of Spoilers. He told the disciples exactly how things would play out. “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised to life.” (Matthew 17:22, 23) But when the disciples got to the hard part of the story, they were completely thrown off, and they freaked out.

When Jesus was arrested, they either deserted him or lied about knowing him. When Jesus was killed, they hid. Though they’d heard the spoilers, they acted like they had no idea how things would turn out. We don’t know whether the disciples forgot how things were to go or didn’t believe what Jesus had told them. But either way, they acted as if there was no hope while Jesus had given every reason for hope.

And on Easter Sunday, everything played out just the way Jesus said things would happen.

We, of course, are usually not much better than the disciples. We live life as if we have no idea of its ultimate direction. We live in fear of pain and loss and death. But we have in the Scriptures some very wonderful spoilers that tell us these things are not the end.

Paul wrote in II Corinthians 4 these words: “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

We fear death. We think it’s the end of the story. But later in that same book, II Corinthians 15, Paul writes, “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The death of Jesus on the cross paid for our sin so we can know new life, the life of the resurrection.

We know the end of the story. Life doesn’t end with death. Jesus said He was preparing a place for us to be with Him. At the end of this part of the story, He will wipe away every tear. That may be the end of a story, but the larger story will continue. And this story can’t be spoiled.