Keeping Easter Alive

As Deacon Cathy reminded us in her sermon on April 3rd (which was fantastic), Easter is a season of the Church, not just a day. In fact, at 50 days long, the Easter Season is more than four times longer than the Christmas Season, yet doesn’t get anywhere near the amount of press.  And in a culture where things become passé minutes after something is introduced, keeping enthusiasm and interest in something for almost two months can seem a bit daunting.

Fortunately, a friend and colleague of mine, The Rev. Laurie Brock, had the brilliant idea of starting a blog called “Fifty Days of Fabulous” (www.50days.org) to celebrate the Easter Season.  Each day a contributing writer offers a reflection on a reading (or picture).  Going one step further, the bloggers encourage readers to respond to what they have just read in order to enact their faith in their daily life and work – which is what we are called to be doing.  Here is the post from April 13th.

In connection to this, I also feel called to respond to a question someone asked me when confronted with a dinner party conversation with a person who associated with the Jewish faith.  The person at the party advocated that Jews and Christian essentially believed the same thing.  I was asked if I agreed with that statement.  I will admit that at first I was surprised because there are obvious differences between Jews and Christians, but I took a moment to reflect.

From one point of view, Jews and Christians are both hoping and waiting for the Messiah to come, so on that point we believe the same thing.  The big difference, of course, is that Christian’s believe that the Messiah has already come once in the being of Jesus of Nazareth and he will come again at some point to judge the earth.  The Jews are still waiting for the first arrival of the Messiah as they do not believe he has come yet.

That is the technical answer.  While I do not know exactly the point the person at the dinner party was intending, I expect, like many people, there was a desire to find commonality rather than divisiveness in religion since most of us agree that we want to be nice to each other, support each other and live in harmony.  That is a nice sentiment for a Coke commercial, but it neuters the deep rootedness that faith offers us. I love my neighbor as myself because Jesus commanded me to do so.  I have no fear of death because Jesus rose from the dead to show us eternal life.

In such situations as these (dinner parties, BBQs, book clubs, etc.) when the topic of religion comes up (and most people try to avoid it) I encourage you to have faith and proclaim the true of the Easter message – God is alive and working in the world today.  It is OK to be different from other religions.  You are not saying they are wrong and you are right. It is about faith and what you believe – about how you make it through the day.  But it should not be some watered down version of the truth that will be acceptable to all people, because it won’t ever be accepted by all people.  It is also part of our faith to claim what we believe in, not to the detriment of others but in honor of our God. 

This is how we keep Easter alive for these great 50 days and all year long.

In Christ,

Rev. Valerie+

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