Easter shows up every year, but the world we’re celebrating it in keeps changing.
There’s so much uncertainty, noise, and division right now that the idea of hope can start to feel abstract. And yet Easter isn’t presented as vague optimism. It’s a very specific kind of hope that comes through loss, not around it.
I find myself wondering what it looks like to hold onto that kind of hope in the middle of real-world challenges, not just in a seasonal sense, but in how we actually live day to day.
That is an interesting question. The short answer is, of course, Easter means the same today as it did the first one—the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus. Instead of letting Easter slip into a tradition, today we need to celebrate it even more.
The Darker days are coming. Evil and sin are on the rise. Good is bad and bad is good, right is wrong, wrong is not only right, but needs to be celebrated. Pride is everywhere. Everyone wants to be famous with lots of “followers.” Sound familiar? And people will fight to the death against something they do not even believe in. What sense does that make?
There is no sense. The concept of over 27 genders and the use of specific pronouns are being fabricated. Sharing the Gospel is considered hate speech and is illegal in many parts of the world. No, it’s not about sense; it is about chaos reigning. God is not a God of confusion, and He does not make mistakes. This is why we need to remember what this is all about. Sadly, it is just going to get worse.
Peter
Your post made me think of this poem which my church reads every Easter:
Make no mistake: if he rose at all
It was as His body;
If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit,
The amino acids rekindle,
The Church will fall.It was not as the flowers,
Each soft spring recurrent;
It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the
Eleven apostles;
It was as His flesh; ours.The same hinged thumbs and toes
The same valved heart
That—pierced—died, withered, paused, and then regathered
Out of enduring Might
New strength to enclose.Let us not mock God with metaphor,
Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence,
Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded
Credulity of earlier ages:
Let us walk through the door.The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
Not a stone in a story,
But the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of
Time will eclipse for each of us
The wide light of day.And if we have an angel at the tomb,
Make it a real angel,
Weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in
The dawn light, robed in real linen
Spun on a definite loom.Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
For our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
Lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed
By the miracle,
And crushed by remonstrance.—John Updike, “Seven Stanzas as Easter” (1960)
I love how it grounds the Resurrection and our Easter hope in reality and the embodied Jesus.
How did the apostles do it? They had the Lord in a world that didn’t know Him. To the world He was just some man crucified and remained dead. Not only did they hold unto their hope, but they went around telling others. The real world challenges of today are no different than the challenges of their time. I think maybe their time was more difficult.
For me it’s almost a separation of who I am here and who I am there. The challenge is bringing who I am there into the here. By here I mean earth and by there I’m talking about who I am in Christ. I must admit it can be a balancing act at times and we all can get a little lost in the process. We have to hang onto it. Who we are in Christ must be our identity and that can mean reminding ourselves of what Christ has done. We’re human and this is earth. There will be times of trouble and weak faith, but we put on the new man in a deliberate action of faith and we proclaim that by obedience to His will. In tough times, I look back and remember all the times He rescued me and answered my prayers. It restores me and builds me up in Him.