But I'll be honest with you, this year it feels a little bit more like Good Friday to me.

Two weeks ago this past Thursday my good friend and close colleague Andy Summers walked into Mission hospital under his own steam. He'd been having some pain in his lower leg and he wanted to get it treated before he led a group of students on his bi-annual study trip to Mexico and Guatemala, which was scheduled to leave this very day, Palm Sunday. (In fact, I'm glad to say it did leave this morning…)

The doctors had figured out that the pain was caused by a blot clot, so Andy came to the hospital for treatment. The plan was to treat the clot medically, with intravenous therapy.

But Andy's blood work came back funny. Within about an hour he'd gotten the first of what would be a series of heartbreaking disclosures. Sorry, Andy, but we can't treat this clot medically because you're blood has gone bad. You have acute leukemia.

Urgent surgery to remove the clot followed, then pneumonia followed shortly after that. The cancer was moving fast but the desperately needed chemotherapy had to wait until the pneumonia subsided, for the former, the chemo, would kill Andy's immune system entirely - leaving him defenseless against the pneumonia.

Andy walked into the hospital on a Thursday expecting to go to Guatemala in a few short weeks. By the following Monday he was on the ropes, fighting for his life. True to form, though, Andy rallied, for he was a life-long fighter against injustice. And for such a good man to be stricken with such a bad disease was perhaps the greatest injustice he'd ever resisted.

So Andy rallied and we rallied with him. Countries, when faced with adversity, wage war. The Warren Wilson community, when faced with this adversity, waged hope. We spelled out HOPE on the soccer field in big giant letters.

We held a vigil for hope in the Chapel, singing and praying our support for Andy. We wrote get well cards and hopeful e-mails by the dozen. We put up websites and made recordings and channeled as much energy as we could muster in Andy's direction.

But in the end we came up short. It seems we caught the cancer too late. By the time the blood clot brought Andy to the hospital the leukemia simply had too much momentum to be stopped, and it hit him with the force of a locomotive. Indeed, it felt like it hit all of us with that same force.

So, this past Thursday, within two weeks of walking into the hospital under his own power, Andy took his last breath and left the rest of us behind feeling numb and confused and grief-stricken.

If there is a small upside to this heartbreaking loss, this inexplicable tragedy, it's this: I think I finally understand this Sunday. For this is not only Palm Sunday. In recent years this Sunday has also come to be known as Passion Sunday, the Sunday that launches the drama of Holy Week.

And drama is exactly the right word. We learned in these last two weeks how fast life can change. We learned how quickly we can go from joy to anger. From hope to grief. From Hosanna! to Crucify him! From Palm Sunday to Good Friday.

After Andy was admitted to the hospital, I asked Trina's permission to send out emails to the campus community to keep everyone up to date on his condition. As that conditioned worsened, someone wrote back to me: We cling to our faith.

I occurred to me that some people might hear that as an easy out. You can't just run to church and take refuge from the worst storms life has to offer. For the winds still blow, even if you're hiding under a pew.

But the deeper truth is that we don't just cling to our faith. We practice our faith. Indeed, at times like these we wage faith. And it's hard.

For some people it's too hard. In our culture we want instant happiness. We want Christmas without Advent. We want Easter without Lent.

Who needs those dark somber seasons, anyway? We don't want to wait for the coming of Christ, we want to party! We don't want to journey through the desert wilderness of Lent. We want to sunbathe in a tropical paradise on spring break.

We want resurrection without Good Friday. We want our Christmas tinsel and our Chocolate Easter bunnies, and we want them now.

But that's not how it works for those of us who wage faith, for we live by a different calendar. We don't get to Christmas without waiting, and we don't get to Easter without effort.

But we wait and we make the effort because we're not interested in instant gratification or easy answers because there are no easy answers, not to the questions we're faced with now.

And we're not interested in mere happiness. We are interested instead in a kind of joy that is equipped to face the worst junk life can through at us and then transform it.

That, finally, is the lesson of Holy Week. With this triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the story approaches its climax. In just a few days Jesus will be arrested. The crowd which cheered his arrival in the city will turn on him like a cancer, and his life will be prematurely snuffed out.

It's a scene that delivers perhaps the most poignant moment in all of scripture. A moment when Jesus responds to the injustice of his own premature death with the question we all ask when bad things happen to good people: Why?

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me , Christ laments as he hangs there broken on the cross. For him, as for us, there is no answer to that question. For him, as for us, the only way out of his suffering is through it. The only way to Easter was through that tomb.

Jesus did not avoid the terrible storm that took his life, he faced it. Just so, Andy Summers did not avoid the storms of life. He looked directly at some of the worst junk the world has to offer and he did not flinch.

He looked at mass graves in Guatemala, and he responded by waging hope with his presence and his singing and the playing of his saxophone.

He looked at the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and, it must be said, the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and he responded by waging peace with his marching and his laughter.

He looked at growing injustice in the world, and he responded by waging faith with his teaching and his direct action.

Always he raised his voice against injustice. On the day we held our first vigil for Andy I stopped by his room for a brief visit. As I was leaving I told him about the vigil, that we were going to gather on the soccer field to spell out HOPE and then proceed from there to the Chapel to hold him in the Light.

He looked me in the eye and said, I wish I could vigil with you. To the very end he was ready to raise his voice against injustice, even when it was visited on him.

Now I have lost a dear friend and the Warren Wilson community has lost one of its brightest lights and most joyful voices. So I will follow Christ to the cross on Good Friday and there, with Christ, I will voice my own lamentation.

I will weep with the grief I feel about losing Andy. I will pray the rage I feel about cancer. And as Andy would do, I will name the anger I feel, five years on, about the ongoing violence in Iraq.

I will not take refuge under a pew. Rather I will find there, I will find here, the strength and energy I need to face the worst junk life has to offer and to transform it.

As a friend of Andy and as a disciple of Jesus, I will wage hope with my singing. I will wage peace with my marching. I will wage faith with my praying. And, finally, one week from today, I will wage joy, we will all wage joy, with our alleluias.

For today may feel like Good Friday, but Easter is coming and that's a promise!

Amen