Word 40 – Easter
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)
Funny what happens to holidays. They accrue all sorts of traditions thaat sometimes obscure the original meaning.
No doubt this holiday you’ll see someone dressed up as the Easter Bunny. Some hunt for Easter eggs or pig out on Easter candy. For sale arae Easter lilies and Easter hams. Some make a tradition of streaming the old movie “Easter Parade” ( Fred Astaire and Judy Garland putting on a show).
Culture has a way of taking profound spiritual reality and converting it into trivial pursuit. That isn’t the true Easter, we protest.
But do we really know why Easter is about?
Every spring, in its northern latitudes, the earth puts on a pageant. Death and rebirth are enacted in bud and blade. Plants that seemed to die in a harsh winter suddenly sprout to life again. The sun rises in the east, bringing warmth and energy to a worn out world.
It seems that the Saxons of Northern Europe and the British Isles honored a goddess of the East, calling her Eostre. We can imagine them holding a festival for her each spring, tossing off their heavy coats for more colorful garb, decorating everything with the flowers and greenery of the new season.
In the sixth century, Pope Gregory sent monks to England for the purpose of converting the local tribes to Christianity. It was then that the spring celebrations of the north became the Christian celebration of the resurrected Christ.
While we don’t believe in the goddess Eostre, we do believe in God’s creation of the world and of seasons. There’s something wonderful and meaningful about how nature itself is hardwired to celebrate resurrection every year. “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made” (Romans 1:20).
In the events leading to His crucifixion, Jesus celebrated the Jewish Passover with His friends. Then He wentn out to pray, was arrested, crucified, and laid in a tomb. But on Sunday morning the tomb was empty. Jesus had risen. He had conquered death, and now He invited everyone into a new, eternal life.
Since most of the early Christians were Jewish, they connected the celebration of Jesus’s resurrection with their annual Passover meal, reading a new, Christ-centered meaning into the old rituals. Eventually it became a separate celebration, though still scheduled near Passover time.
The seasonal holiday of Easter became one and the same with the Christian Passover celebration of Jesus’s resurrection.
Whatever the origins and history of Easter, what matters is the extraordinary meaning of the reality of the resurrection: Jesus’s death on the cross was an act of God to restore what we have defiled, to right the mess we’ve made of everything, and to reunite us with our loving God.
Yet none of that means squat unless Jesus Christ Himself conquered death. If He is just a corpse in a tomb. He is not God. And this is the suspense of Easter week: the long silence of Saturday after the death of Jesus on Friday, like a slow ticking of a clock…
Easter Sunday dawns. We stand at the tomb alongside Jesus’s mother, Mary Magdalene, and the other women. The tomb is open. Empty. We hear the words, “He is risen!”
This, then, is the true meaning of Easter. Christ has conqurered death. God has provided a way for us to be with Him eternally. Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed.
Preparing Your Heart for Easter
Lord God, there are no words within me that are sufficient to express my joy and gratefulness. Christ is alive-risen from the dead and alive in my heart! Thank You!
I hope that you enjoyed this Lent journey and I hope that you found inspiration in it as well. Thanking you for reading!
No Thought Police 