A couple of years ago, I heard Garner Ted Armstrong preaching on TV about the Easter holiday. Armstrong has to be one of the most resilient of the televangelists. He was still on the air despite two highly publicized sex scandals that resulted in him being defrocked and removed from his own church. Oh, and there was also the fact that he had been dead for several years! Someone was still rebroadcasting his sermons years after his death, and he was preaching against “The Evils of Easter.” I just found that kinda funny. If you are going to continue to have a career after death, then you kinda need Easter!
Why preach against Easter? Well, Easter was originally a pagan festival. It's name comes from the Germanic goddess “Eostre,” and many of our Easter customs, like Easter bunnies and colored eggs and wearing suits and ties to church were pagan in origin! (OK, I’m kidding about that last one). Armstrong's point was that because Easter was once connected to paganism and then brought into Christianity through Catholicism, then it was something that we must avoid today. Actually, I pretty much heard the same thing when I was growing up. If I had a mind to look through my files, which I don't, I probably preached something very similar at some point.
One of the reasons that we generally choose not to make Easter a special festival of the resurrection is that we see each Sunday that way. Each and every Sunday, we eat the bread and drink the cup which symbolizes Jesus’ body and blood. Some disciples choose not to have communion every Sunday, and my point is not to criticize them. My point is simply this—we have committed to be people of the cross. We want to emphasize the meaning of the cross. We want to be God’s family under the cross. And the way Jesus told us to point to the cross and remember the cross is through this solemn ritual we call communion. And so each Sunday we gather at the foot of the cross to remember.
But there is a danger in eating communion every week, isn’t there? It is so very easy to allow tradition to become traditional and ritual to become rote. Familiarity breeds contempt… or at least complacency. And that is the one thing we must never allow to happen in communion. This simple act doesn’t just tell a story; it tells the story. And it allows us to become participants in the story. We cannot allow the death and resurrection of Jesus to become a once a year festival... or a once a week rite. For disciples, the cross is something we must carry and the resurrections is something we must live every day.
Why preach against Easter? Well, Easter was originally a pagan festival. It's name comes from the Germanic goddess “Eostre,” and many of our Easter customs, like Easter bunnies and colored eggs and wearing suits and ties to church were pagan in origin! (OK, I’m kidding about that last one). Armstrong's point was that because Easter was once connected to paganism and then brought into Christianity through Catholicism, then it was something that we must avoid today. Actually, I pretty much heard the same thing when I was growing up. If I had a mind to look through my files, which I don't, I probably preached something very similar at some point.
One of the reasons that we generally choose not to make Easter a special festival of the resurrection is that we see each Sunday that way. Each and every Sunday, we eat the bread and drink the cup which symbolizes Jesus’ body and blood. Some disciples choose not to have communion every Sunday, and my point is not to criticize them. My point is simply this—we have committed to be people of the cross. We want to emphasize the meaning of the cross. We want to be God’s family under the cross. And the way Jesus told us to point to the cross and remember the cross is through this solemn ritual we call communion. And so each Sunday we gather at the foot of the cross to remember.
But there is a danger in eating communion every week, isn’t there? It is so very easy to allow tradition to become traditional and ritual to become rote. Familiarity breeds contempt… or at least complacency. And that is the one thing we must never allow to happen in communion. This simple act doesn’t just tell a story; it tells the story. And it allows us to become participants in the story. We cannot allow the death and resurrection of Jesus to become a once a year festival... or a once a week rite. For disciples, the cross is something we must carry and the resurrections is something we must live every day.
3 comments:
There is nobody on the cross the cross is empty as is the grave. We all have our own cross to carry today. It happened, Christ died (he was killed as foretold by the profits of God, for that purpose) he was raised from the dead and he lives. . . we testify to that.
Flogging is believed to have been a common practiced. It exhausted and weakened the body and spirit of the one being flogged. It also made him easier to handle and less likely to speak up against the government as he was being forced to carrying of the instrument of his slow and painful death at the time of public executions. Mocking was not uncommon and the mob did as they were lead to do by those in charge. Believing they were doing a good thing. Most simply conformed to the norm and did not dare speak up against those in charge, no matter how sick that norm was. There were some who cried and hid their eyes as he died on that cross. There look at the cross and carry yours, is it not light in comparison to the one that our savior died on for our sake. . . because he loved us that much, he the only begotten son of God, bleed and died that all may enter into His love and be forgiven. It was a high price that was paid and non other could have done what He did for us. Don’t waste it, it is your life that belongs to Him.
Should Christians not dwell more on why Christ’s blood was shied than cruel way it was done. The cup that is drunk and that body that is shared, it is broken (if it were cut (even it were cut very thinly there would be some that goes unexamined and unaltered by the separations) (I believe that is why we say that we break bread and examine it, know its structure and it’s content and remember.) He rose again and He is even now with Him for us.
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