Transcripts:
We no longer read the signs. The signs read us. Once humanity looked upward for omens, three stars aligned, a comet's arc, the flight pattern of birds against an amber sky. We interpreted. We sought meaning in the natural book of the world. Those were the sign of the times. Moments when the universe whispered and we strained to listen.
Now we have entered the times of the signs. They are everywhere and nowhere. They glow in our pockets at 3:00 a.m. They follow us from website to website, learning our desires before we name them. They promise and proclaim and point in every direction until direction itself becomes meaningless.
The signs no longer indicate a path. They are the landscape. Risen is whatever Easter is wherever. The old calendar held resurrection to a specific morning, a garden tomb, a precise geography of hope. Spring arrived and with it the promise of renewal, time to the moon and the equinox, ancient rhythms older than the faith itself.
But risen is whatever Easter is, wherever now. Resurrection has been democratized, commercialized, unmed. We resurrect our social media accounts after digital fasts. We resurrect our bodies at the gym, our careers after setbacks, our reputations after scandal. Easter arrives as chocolate in January, as spring decor in February, as a three-day weekend whenever we need it.
The stone has been rolled away so many times it no longer guards anything in particular. We have gained the language of rebirth and lost its grammar. Every ending is a new beginning, every failure a pivot, every death a transformation. Which is to say, if everything rises, nothing has died. If Easter is wherever, then nowhere is holy ground where you must remove your shoes.
Black Friday is not good. Good Friday knew what it was. It wore its contradiction openly. Good because of what it meant. Terrible because of what it was. Blood and wood and the sky turning dark at noon. You could not shop your way through Good Friday. You could only wait. Black Friday is not good. It is black like ink spreading across a balance sheet.
Like the crush of bodies against big box doors, like the 4:00 a.m. parking lot under sodium lights. It is black like the Friday after Thanksgiving when we give thanks by trampling each other for discounted electronics. The inversion is complete. The day of sacrifice has been moved, repurposed.
Now we sacrifice our time, our dignity, our communal rest at the altar of doorbuster deals. We line up in the cold not to mourn but to consume. We rise early, not to pray, but to save. And we call this black, this profitable darkness, as if naming it honestly makes it acceptable. At least Black Friday doesn't pretend to be good.
At least it wears its hunger openly. The last supper was delivered. There was bread broken by hands that would soon be broken. There was wine poured by one who would soon pour himself out. There were friends around a table, reclining in the ancient way, passing dishes, feet washed, confusion brewing about what all of it meant.
The last supper was delivered. Now it arrives in a bag, contactless, left on the doorstep with a photo confirmation. No table required. No gathering necessary. The meal atomized, individualized, optimized for convenience. We have apps for communion. We have streaming services for fellowship. We have curated feeds instead of shared food, reactions instead of responses, connections instead of presents.
The meal arrives, but there is no breaking of bread because there is no bread to break together. Only separate orders, separate meals, mount separate everything. What is lost is not the food but the furniture. Not the meal but the table. Not the convenience but the inconvenience that made it sacred. The awkwardness of Judas sitting close enough to dip his bread in the same bowl.
The intimacy of betrayal and love sharing space. The unbearable closeness of the last evening before everything changed. What we have inherited. We have inherited a world where every day is Easter and therefore no day is. where Black Friday lasts a month and Good Friday is a relic, where the last supper comes in disposable containers and sacred meals are content to consume alone.
We have entered the times of the signs, and the signs tell us everything and nothing. They point they point everywhere, which is another way of saying they point nowhere. They promise meaning while draining meaning away, one notification at a time. Perhaps this is the real inversion. We thought we were reading the signs, interpreting the times, understanding the moment.
We did not realize the signs were reading us, interpreting our desires, understanding our weaknesses, leading us not to revelation, but to the checkout cart. The question is not whether we can return to the sign of the times, to a world of singular meaning, located holiness, unre repeatable moments. That world, if it ever fully existed, is gone.
The question is whether we can learn to live in the times of the signs without losing ourselves completely. Whether we can find amid the infinite scroll and the constant delivery and the perpetual sale, some table worth gathering around, some Friday worth calling good, some rising worth the name Easter, some sign worth following, even if it points toward nothing we can purchase, nothing we can optimize, nothing that can be delivered to our door.
Perhaps especially then.
