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| April - May 2008 | Volume 57, Issue 2 |
Raised with Christ
"Every morning is Easter morning from now on! Every day's
resurrection day, the past is over and gone! Yesterday I was bored and
lonely; But today look and see! I belong to the Easter people! Life's
exciting to me! "
For many people, Easter is about getting dressed up and coming to church for one of their rare visits. For others, Easter is a time to see old friends and join in family get-togethers. Some enjoy Easter because there are more people in the pews; we have brass at the Easter Day Service and the choir is always in good form. But to limit our celebration of Easter to Easter Sunday is to leave ourselves short of the good news that only begins on that day. Easter is quite early this year, March 23. But Easter does not end on March 24. In fact the Season of Easter lasts fifty days and comes to an end only on Pentecost Sunday.
Of course during Easter we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus; we celebrate Christ's victory over death. But that event is not something that simply gives us hope for a future life; it also becomes, for us, an invitation to embrace the hope of that event in our lives right now. "Resurrection shouts 'No!' to everything in our world that works against God's will, and shouts 'Yes!" to God's victory." We are called to be Easter people, people who embrace the truth of what God has done for us; people who understand that because of Jesus Christ we can truly live; people who believe that God so loved the world that he sent Jesus Christ to save us; people who respond in faith so that the blessings of being Easter people might be shared with all whom we encounter in life.
As in years past, we will begin the Easter season with great pomp and celebration at our Easter Sunday morning service. Yes, we will have special music and yes, we hope to have a great many people join us. But more that that we come to celebrate what God has done for us through Jesus Christ and embrace the truth that because of what he did we can live life as Easter people, people who believe that every morning is Easter morning.
In the subsequent Sundays, we will look at the ways that Easter faith grew in the early church and how we might grow that same Easter faith in our lives today.
While Easter Sunday is the "Sunday of Sundays," we are reminded that Easter is not simply about the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but also celebrates the good news that God makes all things new, that we have been raised with Christ now and that we can cast aside the power of sin in our lives.
I hope that you will join us for this Easter season, not just on Easter Sunday, but every Sunday so that you might embrace this gift of grace that comes through faith in Jesus Christ and that by living that faith you might grow more and more in awareness that every morning is Easter morning.
1. Donald Stuart Marsh & Richard Kinsey Avery, Every Morning is Easter Morning, 1972 Hope Publishing Company, CCLI License No. 2004572
2. The Ministry Unit on Theology and Worship for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Liturgical Year, Supplemental Resource 7, (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992) p.28.
