As I sit and think about Easter this weekend, I am struck my many things. Easter is by far my favorite holiday, as we celebrate God’s saving work within humanity coming to its climax. This weekend is so powerful, as remember Jesus’ death and resurrection in both its historical context as well as its present reality. Sadly, this beautiful holiday has, like so many before it, been engulfed by the rampant consumerism and materialism that plagues our culture. One only has to walk through the local store to see the vast amount of goods that the Easter holiday has produced, 99.9% of them unnecessary and quite frankly a waste. Sadly, many people within the Body of Christ have jumped on this bandwagon, “celebrating” Easter from within the consumer culture. Well this has been evident at Christmas for some time, it seems all the more disgusting with Easter, as it represents the completion of God’s work which he began (on the planet earth, anyway) with the Incarnation. Maybe I am making too big of deal about this, but it seems silly to me to celebrate the real, tangible events of the death and resurrection of Jesus, which brought about a whole new way of living in which we live by the values of the Kingdom of God rather than the wider culture that we live in, by buying and consuming. As I have remembered and pondered Easter this year, I have been more and more struck by the fact that as Christians we are called to live in a way that reflects the values and heart of God, yet we (myself fully included) celebrate the most powerful event(s) that brought about that new reality by participating in a system that makes it worth as much as the commodities that it produces. While I feel that we (I included) have a way to go in curbing our rampant consumerism and materialism, I feel that Easter is a good place to start.
I am all for celebrating, with good food and good candy. I just want to always keep in mind the most important thing, which is, remembering Jesus. Let’s remember Good Friday, where the cross, with Jesus on it, stands before us, showing us the Incarnate God who came to bring new life to humanity slowly losing his life in the most painful way possible, and in doing so gained and resounding victory over the evil in this world and make new life possible. Let us remember Saturday, where there was darkness, but also an uncontainable hope ready to burst forth. And let us remember Sunday, when Jesus rose again, and with his resurrection was brought the beautiful and powerful reality of a whole new way of living, one that not only reconciled us to God but also reconciled us to each other. It is this new reality that we live in today, and in this new reality that we look back and celebrate the event, the working of God in history, that made this all possible.
Happy Easter everyone. Have fun. Stay safe. And remember.
In Christ, Luke
