I Was Just Thinking … About Celebrating Easter

Easter has always been a religious observance. Two thousand years ago in what is now Great Britain people celebrated the arrival of spring, which was associated with the activity of the goddess Eastre. The rabbit was the earthly symbol of this goddess because its fertility spoke to people of the vibrant life that emerged at the time of the vernal equinox each year.

Today we still associate Easter with the promise of life, but of a far different kind and for a wildly different reason. Today Easter is the holiday and the season in which disciples of Jesus all over the world celebrate his resurrection from the dead. For us Easter is the most holy—that is, the most valuable and honored—of the days of the year. We cherish Resurrection Sunday because it reminds us that Jesus accomplished his mission to deliver us from the power and punishment due us for our sin.

Originally, Jesus’ disciples celebrated his resurrection in conjunction with the Jewish celebration of  Passover. They did this because his crucifixion occurred on the day Passover began and his resurrection occurred the morning after the Sabbath of Passover, the first day of the week. They also referenced Passover in their celebrations because Jesus taught them that God’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt pointed forward to something bigger that God was going to do through him: deliver people in every nation from their bondage to sin and death.

The disciples didn’t even wait for the first anniversary of Jesus’ resurrection to begin celebrating though. They began to talk about it immediately and to meet together as a group on the first day of the Jewish week—the day which became our Sunday. They celebrated because Jesus wasn’t just resuscitated so that he would die again later. He returned to life with a glorious, new body that would never die again. But this didn’t sit well with many of the Jewish religious leaders.

As witnesses of the resurrection, over 500 of the early disciples made quite a stir in Jerusalem. They were told not to speak about it. But, in a very early instance of civil disobedience, their leadership responded, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to give heed to you rather than to God, you be the judge; for we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard.”

Since the beginning, Jesus’ resurrection has been the central tenet of our faith in Christ: The resurrection proved that Jesus was the anointed ruler God promised to provide; that he was telling the truth about his being God incarnate; and that God the Father had looked favorably on his death because it freed him to be gracious to anyone who would pledge allegiance to him. The resurrection validated Jesus’ promise that everyone who approached the Father by calling on his name would receive forgiveness, would receive God’s Holy Spirit as an aid to godly living, and would receive a body just like Jesus’ to live in forever.

Today, with other Christians everywhere, we celebrate the event that made Jesus’ journey from the cradle to the cross the crowning glory of his life on earth because it guaranteed his promise to crown with glory anyone who will follow him in the obedience of faith.