You know what? I was wrong about Easter. I won’t deny it. I had a whole blog post written out about how Christians stole Easter. I went to read it to my wife, and she was like, “What are you talking about?”
So, I started doing some research. I’m an idiot for one thing. Christians didn’t “steal” Easter from anyone. Maybe the name, but that’s it. My wonderful and much smarter wife pointed out to me (blissfully ignorant in my rantings) that Jesus’ famous Last Supper was in celebration of Passover… duh.
Not only that, but my point was a bit… how shall we say… far fetched and stretching. I wanted to use a picture that I found on Google images that had this Easter bunny pooping out eggs that had Catholic Jesus images inside, who got out and ran to a church in the background. I think I wanted to use it for shock value mostly. Maybe that was my intent. Or, maybe, I just missed the point.
It’s one of the reasons I didn’t post yesterday. I thought I might have been missing something. Being more irreverent than I should be. Maybe that’s what it was. I wanted to be able to interpret the views of the world, but I can’t. I’ve grown up in the church my whole life, and I think it’s given me a hefty bias. Not everyone views Easter as some crazy mixed up religious holiday. And, it’s not something that Christians just stuck Jesus in the midst of. He actually is the reason for the holiday.
And what a holiday!
The whole thing is intriguing. Holy week. There’s Maunday Thursday that symbolizes the Last Supper, Jesus praying in the garden, and being taken away for trials. The service is a somber and interesting. They go through the whole thing, and there is a ceremony at the end called “Stripping the Altar” where all decorations, candles, etc is removed from the altar and walls of the Sanctuary. This is showing that Jesus was taken away from us and handed over to the authorities.
Then there’s Good Friday, which seems backwardly named, but isn’t. It’s the day that Jesus hung on a cross. This would seem like a Bad Friday, and I doubt that the disciple would have named it Good Friday at the time, but when Jesus hung on the cross it was for all of us. For the forgivness of our sins. For this, it was a good friday.
Then there’s Saturday. Unnamed, and probably because they couldn’t come up with a way to name a day that symbolized tension, fear, and confusion. Think about it. Put yourself in the shoes of one of the disciples (other than Judas… he’s already dead at this point). Their teacher, preacher, rabbi, and savior just got executed. He could’ve stopped it, but he… didn’t. He could have proved once and for all to everyone that watched him be beaten and executed that he was God. That he was the one who they were waiting for. But… he didn’t. He died.
They all knew he could do miraculous things, they’d seen him walk on water, calm storms, heal the wounded, sick and dead. But he didn’t do anything like that this time. He took every lashing, every insult, every sin and carried it with him onto the cross.
And now what? All the things that they had done and said? People knew them as his followers! People would be coming for them. They needed to hide. What would they do with the rest of their lives? Live in secrecy?
What would you have named that day?
Anyway, so then there’s Easter Sunday. The resurrection. When Jesus makes his victory over death. Which is where another point of contention came up from my wife. We started having a conversation about it. I thought that the resurrection was the completion of the forgiveness of sins and the final proof that Jesus was God.
Well, when my wife challenged me on it, I had nothing to back that belief up. So, she sent me to dig into it.
That’s where I found an interesting “timeline” of sorts for the resurrection as a fulfillment. Get this:
- Death came into the world because of sin.Romans 5:12
- Jesus raised people from the dead as a sign of God’s power over sin.Luke 7:11-17John 11:1-44
- The resurrection of Jesus is the key victory over death and the beginning of the new creation. Matthew 28Luke 24Acts 2:22-39
- Because Jesus rose from the dead, his followers have a new life now. They will also rise again with new bodies when Jesus comes again. Romans 6:1-101 Corinthians 15Philippians 3:7-21
- At the final resurrection, all people will rise from the dead to be judged by God. Daniel 12:1-2Matthew 22:23-33Revelation 20:11-15
So, what’s all that mean? Well, after reading all of the verses that this listed, I do believe that the resurrection is the fulfillment of Jesus’ ministry, but I don’t think I was right to say that the resurrection was the completion of forgiveness.
I don’t believe that the sacrifice alone could have been the complete forgiveness for our sins. God could have left it at that. He could have only offered the grace that is available to us because of Jesus’ death, but He stepped it up a notch.
Jesus wasn’t just there to be a sacrifice, he was there to usher in a new kingdom. One that was misinterpreted by many people to be a physical kingdom. Jesus came to this Earth to plant the foundation for the Kingdom of God to flourish. His life was the directions to get there, his death was the ticket to get in, but his resurrection was the grand opening to a whole new kingdom.
To recap: What I thought was true, wasn’t completely accurate. I’m glad I have my wife to talk through some of this stuff. I’m not going to lie to you, my first draft was a whole bunch of ignorance. And, nobody likes that. But, what I found while searching the Bible was a message even better than what I had believed. Jesus didn’t just die for my sins, he also rose again to make the Kingdom of God accessible for me and everyone.
What does Easter mean to you? What’s been something that you’ve believed that reading the Bible (or something else) has changed your perspective?
Since college, my adult life has been spent trying to prove God’s existence. To myself, to others, it doesn’t matter. I was trying to prove His existence with my logic and ration. I’ve always felt that if God really wanted us to understand Himself, then we would be able to prove Him. Not necessarily scientifically, but to a certain degree prove Him to my liking.
