Why Easter matters

 

 

I suppose it’s only natural to think of Easter as a miracle; after all Christ’s rising from the dead is clearly within God’s realm. But calling Easter a miracle excuses us from having anything further to do with it, since a miracle is God’s doing. We believe that God’s incarnation in Jesus and Jesus’ death and resurrection were for our salvation and benefit and not God’s benefit, making Easter more a sacrament than a miracle. A sacrament, requires our participation for its existence.  God performs miracles but man celebrates sacraments.  God may work a miracle apart from man. However, man is essential to the presence of a sacrament. 

If Easter is to be a sacramental event, we must represent it for each other with our own flesh and blood.  Easter is sacramental every time one of us makes our life a source of comfort and hope for another.  Easter is sacramental when our words heal, when we listen to each other and let transient worldly distractions be replaced by a God-centered life.

John Calvin wrote that becoming Son of man with us, he made us sons of God with him; that by his descent to earth, he has prepared an ascent to heaven for us; that by taking on out mortality, he has conferred his immortality upon us; that accepting our weakness, he has strengthened us by his power; that receiving our poverty unto himself, he has transferred our wealth to us; that taking the weight of our iniquity upon himself (which oppressed us), he has clothed us with his righteousness. (Kruger, The Shack Revisited, p. 197) 

Jesus became incarnate to not only teach us how to live our lives but to reside in Him through Jesus and lift us up into a life of communion, of participation in the very triune life of God. When we say “in him through him and with him” as we celebrate the Eucharist, we are reminded of our participation in his birth, death and resurrection. (John 20:1-9)

(Adapted from Dawn without Darkness, Anthony Padovano, p78)