Last night was the annual Easter parade here in Kupang, West Timor, and I wanted to try to capture something of it before it fades from memory, because it’s a great Indonesian experience while also being a great point of reflection.

It’s huge – bigger than the Independence Day parade, I was told, an interesting fact in itself.  Over 100 local churches and youth groups put in their application to build a float depicting a biblical story from the creation account to the resurrection of Jesus.  Lined up in chronological order, the elaborately decorated trucks slowly wind their way down the hill, their creators dancing and singing, declaring the story in the dust and diesel fumes that follow.  There’s the garden of Eden, resplendent with live snake, and every classic story after – the exodus, David and Goliath, Samson – a personal favourite this year: a truck converted into the story of Jonah and the whale, complete with functioning water spout, and two features most folks miss when they read the story: a five piece band and disco lights beneath that heaving, monstrous tail (Jonah 4:3).  The music is loud, distorted, the energy of the youth flagging but incredibly sustained over the 15 km journey from hilltop to valley.  The streets are lined with people, the footpath so packed that it’s a squeeze to move down any section of the main road; side roads blocked by a sea of motorbikes.  The floats stop every few minutes to regale the crowds with stories, music and dancing, the biblical narrative moving ever towards the resurrection of Jesus, the grand finale.  Slowly, slowly goes the journey.

With delicious irony, we bail at the Babylonian exile, and wander through the streets towards the pasar malam to find some dinner.  We pass a worn-out trash picker sleeping on his sack of plastic bottles, a beggar twisted into cruel contortions by polio, and a five-year-old street urchin asking for a few rupiah.  I wonder if this trio know there’s a celebratory, dancing convoy two, three, streets away, telling the story of a resurrected Jesus, the rising kingdom of God, the putting right of wrongs. Were they invited to participate? Or do they find the story unbelievable, inaccessible?  Is two, three streets too far away to hear the music?  Their combined experience is a paradoxical world away from the bright lights, the colour, the story playing out down the road.

I’m forced to walk back to hotel post-dinner; the roads are all clogged.  I have no option but to walk with the floats, be a part of the flashing lights, the dancing, the grand narrative that winds its way down the hill to the valley below.  As I walk, my spirit is encouraged by the metaphor playing out around me; the unfolding journey that won’t be hurried juxtaposed by the brokenness I encountered two, three streets away.  We live in the here-not-yet, the occasional sweet taste of life-as-it’s-meant-to-be reminding us that the bitterness that lingers in the backwaters and the alleys of our world and our lives doesn’t belong here.

I was kept awake til after midnight, tired but relieved when the last story, that final word – the resurrection – eventually arrived.  But it did arrive. It did arrive.

This is the story I live for.