The meaning of Easter to me has changed several times over my lifetime. As I was growing up and during most of my teenage years, I thought that Easter was the most overhyped holiday where nothing happened and was nothing but a big letdown. It was a time that people felt that they needed to buy new clothes to impress people that they only saw once a year at church service and that there was nothing else to this holiday. Even as a believer, I felt this way.
Then as people whom I knew and loved started dying, Easter became a basis for my hope of seeing them again. Heaven and the afterlife started feeling more real to me at that point. Resurrection became something to look forward to.
About twenty years ago, I started approaching Easter in a different way. I went through the gospels and aligned the events that happened between Palm Sunday and Easter on a daily basis. Although my list did not match exactly lists that I saw was published, I was confident in my results. I even went further. On Good Friday through Easter Sunday, I put the list down with the approximate time that I thought that they happened. I used these lists to help me meditate on the events and to help me live the events in my imagination which in turn helped me to realize the humanity of Jesus as well as his divinity. Doing this did help me to connect more with the holiday.
A few years ago during autumn my world fell apart. Church leaders of the place that I was attending rose against me, orally attacking me and using their influence to turn my family against me. This was a dark time in my life as I even cried out to God where was He in all of this. I felt in my heart that God was using those experiences to help me understand the agony of the betrayal that happened during the cross. I was only given a taste of that, and I could not handle it. That event has changed Easter for me once again. Reliving the week in my imagination no longer carried the meaning that it once did. Now, I relish the outcome of the events. The relationship that I have with God which would not be possible without those events. I am now free to love others because of this so Easter has become a celebration, not only of things to come, but also for the friendship that I have with all of you.
your post remind me of a comment made today at church in announcing various holy week events, which in the Lutheran tradition are celebrated more formally than in the evangelical world.
ReplyDeleteIn mentioning the upcoming Maundy Thursday, Good Friday service and the Easter Vigil services he said: 'We do these things not to keep busy, but to live out our faith.' These events are really more of the core of our faith than Christmas is.
I agree though about Easter, at least when I was a kid I did not understand it. See FB comment.