The REAL Truth About Easter
Over the course of the next week (especially on Sunday) we will eat more than 600 million Peeps. Yes, that sugar-coated, yellow, marshmallow, baby chicken. Okay, they got more than just yellow ones now. We will hide millions of hard-boiled and plastic eggs. We will eat a billion ears off of chocolate bunnies. And then the rest. Must start with the ears. We will spend $130 per household for various Easter-themed items that we really don’t need. Of course, all of these facts mean nothing this year as we are facing an Easter that is surrounded by the fall-out of the COVID-19 virus. Things will be different.
While many of us will not even purchase a single Peep or decorate a single egg because we cannot go outside to the store, Easter shall come. Sunday is Easter/Resurrection Day whether we like it or not.
Facts & Religiosity
Many Christians freak out because of the “real” facts behind the word “Easter” and the fertility goddess behind the name. The truth behind the bunny rabbit. The honest facts of eggs and what that’s all about.
So we see the origins of this holiday and we ask ourselves whether or not the pagan sources should be brought out and the Christian told that he no longer should celebrate it. Is it a sin to celebrate a holiday that glorifies the habits of heathen beliefs? Do we face the “wrath” of God because we consume decorated eggs or traipse around in an Easter bunny costume scaring the junk out of little kids? These and other questions come around this time of year, every year. And Christmas time, too!
Has society’s demand for holidays spilled over into the church to such a degree that we are full of materialized thinking, leaving the spiritual behind in an effort to reach a dying world? Or just fulfilling our own craving and lust for chocolate? Tongue in cheek, yes, but there is truth in that thought. Has the church handled the facts behind Easter as it should?
Nicky, Martin & The Past
I was at a large meeting once in Sacramento, California where Nicky Cruz was the key speaker. An amazing individual. And the real person behind the Erik Estrada character in the movie, “The Cross and the Switchblade”. This was a book written by David Wilkerson based upon his life of bringing Jesus to the gangs in New York City. It was also the first Christian book I read besides the Bible.
Nicky’s life was immersed in the Mau Mau gang. His life was filled with evil acts and causing pain for other gangs and innocent bystanders. He was, simply put, a sinful, wretched, corrupt, and vicious man. He had his own rules and did not care who was hurt or killed in the process. A man truly meant to spend eternity in hell. Then God showed up.
Everything in Nicky’s life changed. He became not only a good person but indeed, began teaching the world around him the greatness of the God that transformed him.
What if someone came forward to tell the world the truth behind his life? What if it became a big deal in the church that Nicky Cruz had an awful past and shouldn’t be listened to? Then, the truth begins to topple all those who also had a past. Then what?
Let’s say for a minute that there was God of chocolate that sacrificed the red-crested tree-rat every year on the 15th of January. A horrible thing to do, for certain. We need those tree-rats! Especially the red ones. So a thousand years go by and a man is born on January 15th. He grows to become one of the greatest civil rights leaders to ever live. So much so that we begin celebrating his birthday. Then someone finds out that the red-crested tree-rat used to be sacrificed on Mr. King’s birthday, so we can no longer celebrate him.
Stupid and ridiculous, isn’t it? Yes, it is.
Nicky Cruz is a great man of God because of what he was saved from. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a great man of God and an incredible freedom fighter. Can we toss these because of the past?
[Tweet "Easter celebrates the PROOF of Jesus’ claim of Deity. It wasn’t enough that He died on a cross, but to prove to all that He was Salvation and the Son of God, He rose. Just as He said He would."]
Easter (the holiday) celebrates the PROOF of Jesus’ claim of Deity. It wasn’t enough that He died on a cross, but to prove to all that He was Salvation and the Son of God, He rose. Just as He said He would.
Sanctifying A Day
Remembering what God did on that day sanctifies anything that it might have been in the past. It doesn’t encourage or oblige it. It doesn’t verify the existence of a goddess or her power. It doesn’t advocate the fertility rites of a bygone, apostate, pagan belief system. The past, like our own past, is washed away. The truth of the past does not alter what God is doing now.
[Tweet "Remembering what God did on that day sanctifies anything that it might have been in the past."]
As Jesus sat with His disciples eating dinner the night before His death on the cross, He told them, “Do this in remembrance of Me.” Was He talking about just communion of wine and bread? Maybe, perhaps, possibly we can set aside and celebrate Easter, His resurrection, in remembrance of Him?