Life can be full of disappointments. Can we get past it and find real hope?

Let's be real for a moment. Sometimes, life just stinks.

"You're riding high in April, shot down in May," the song says; "that's life."

You get a bad report from your doctor.

Or your kid gets in trouble at school — or worse, with the police.

Or you're trying to break free from a bad habit but its grip is too tight to sever.

You wreck the car. You break an ankle. The roof begins to leak. Your bank account is on life-support.

You have a dead-end job and you desperately want out, but you feel trapped.

You get that late-night call we all dread. Or you find yourself, through the worst of circumstances, standing by the coffin of somebody you love knowing your own life has been permanently altered and you don't know how you're going to get through the night.

Or you're just plain sick of all the negativity that seems to pervade our society these days. Especially in an election year like this one.

And you're searching for a way out. You need a little hope.

This week, Christians all over the world have been marking the events that led to the execution of Jesus, culminating in the celebration of Easter — the holiday commemorating the biblical account of the resurrection of Jesus; a symbol of new life and a new season. And new hope.

But regardless of whether you're a believer, there's no arguing that the drama of the story behind Holy Week is as profound as you will find.

The Bible tells us Jesus and his followers begin the week on a high note; processing into Jerusalem, just in time for Passover, to the cheers of throngs of people who've heard about this holy man who performs miracles and might be the messiah.

Jesus spends the week teaching in the temple, but not necessarily delivering a quiet academic lecture. In his one act of fury depicted in the New Testament, we see him upsetting the commerce of people exploiting the faith of worshipers for their own ends — upending the tables of loan sharks and hucksters, driving them out of that holy place with a whip.

The temple was to be a house of prayer, he said, not a den of thieves.

Through the week, he remarks on the sacrifice of a poor woman who gives from her poverty, allows another woman — racked by guilt over her sins — to wash his feet with an expensive perfume, then pays that act forward by washing the feet of his disciples as they prepare for the Passover feast.

He knows, he tells them, that one of them will betray him to the self-righteous religious leaders he's offended. And that Peter, one of his inner circle, would deny he ever knew him.

After the meal, he goes to a quiet garden for a time of agonized prayer.

And then everything falls apart.

Judas, who tradition tells us had expected Jesus to lead an insurrection against Rome but was disillusioned to find Jesus had another mission, arrives with guards to arrest him.

Jesus is shuffled between the Roman governor Pontius Pilate and Herod Antipas, a Roman underlord, because neither of them really wants to deal with him. Herod sends him back to Pilate, and as Pilate interrogates him, Jesus tells him that his mission is to "bear witness to the truth."

Then, St. John tells us, Pilate asks perhaps the most gripping question of all: "What is truth?"

It's a question a lot of us seem to find ourselves asking lately.

Meanwhile, all the other disciples have scattered. And before we're too hard on them, perhaps we should consider their situation.

They'd heard his teaching. They'd seen loaves and fishes multiply. They'd watched lame people walk and blind men see and a little girl — not to mention their friend Lazarus — return from the dead. They had been so convinced that Jesus was the real thing that, as Peter once reminded him, they'd left everything to follow him.

But Jesus was now in the hands of people who had little regard for that and who wanted to kill him. And he hadn't even put up a fight.

Now what? Where could they go? How much danger were they in? Was he who they believed he was? What should they think about this? What could they believe in?

Sometimes life just stinks.

I was on a bus in Edinburgh, Scotland, years ago, listening intently as a tour guide was pointing out notable sites. As we approached St. Giles Cathedral, where the renowned reformer John Knox had preached, he observed that Knox had preached a litany of judgment, fire and brimstone to people whose lives were already precarious, but never once about the love of God.

I didn't know a lot about John Knox; I hadn't studied his sermons enough to know if this assessment was fair. But it apparently was the impression he'd left nearly 500 years later. And the words stung.

They still do.

Sometimes those of us who profess Christianity are just like the Sanhedrin who compelled the execution of Jesus. We sing "Just as I Am" but expect even nonbelievers to play by our rules; to adopt our values even when they don't share our convictions. And we use scriptures as a club to flog a hurting world into submission.

We try to make people "be" something before they accept or understand the faith that we believe redeems us. How many, like that tour guide, are we turning away as a result?

Is this the Lord's way?

I don't think so, for many reasons — not least of which was something that happened during the crucifixion.

The Bible tells us Jesus was executed with two thieves — one of whom took out his own suffering on Jesus and joined the bullying crowd, cursing him for not getting them out of this mess.

But the other one knew that he was a criminal who, by the codes of the time, had earned his fate. Tortured as much by his guilt as he was by one of the most sadistic forms of execution ever devised, he couldn't undo what he'd done. He couldn't make amends. He couldn't be baptized. It was an ignominious end to shameful life.

In those final desperate moments, he turned to the innocent man dying beside him — the person who more than anyone else had every right to berate him — in search of compassion, redemption and hope.

And he found them.

Jesus isn't about politics. He's not about condemnation. He's not about raising money.

He's about hope.

Even when life just stinks.

Happy, hopeful Easter, Hagerstown.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: More than anything, Easter is about hope for people who hurt