Why Easter Is a Sacrament

 It's only natural to think of Easter and the Resurrection as a miracle; after all Christ’s rising from the dead is extraordinary and outside the realm of human experience. Yet, calling Easter a miracle diminishes its importance and makes the event exclusively God’s purview and removes us from having anything to do with it. This was not God’s intent because God’s Divine incarnation in Jesus and Jesus’ death and resurrection were for our salvation and not for God's benefit. This point is reaffirmed in John's Gospel from  two weeks ago: "The voice did not come for my sake but for yours...And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself."  God did not need Jesus' death or resurrection.  

 

God performs miracles but man celebrate sacraments. While God works a miracles interdependent from man, man is essential to the presence of a sacrament. A sacrament requires our participation for its very existence. 

Easter is never more "sacramental" than when one man gives his life for another. Christians seek to make Easter sacramental in their lives by their memory of Jesus through their words and deeds.

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 teach us how to live our lives and abide in Him through Jesus. Each time we celebrate the Eucharist and say “in him through him and with him,”  we are reminded of our participation in his birth, death and resurrection. (John 20:1-9) (Adapted from Dawn without Darkness, Anthony Padovano, p78)