JourneyOnline
In the States and the northern hemisphere, Easter comes at the end of what is generally a harsh winter so it gets wrapped up in this concept of new beginnings.
A lot of the time I rebel against that kind of thing because it gets wrapped up with the Easter bunny, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t that concept of new beginnings in Christ and what that offers us: new life and the opportunity to start over, the joy and excitement of Christ bursting forth from the tomb gives hope to us all, to know that one day we will be with him and that death doesn’t have the final say.
I remember when I was ministering once in Illinois, we got up for a sunrise service and the weather was so bad that we had to have the service in a high school auditorium, which was just about as far removed from the thought of Easter as you can possibly get.
Here, everything is still green.
Theologically, Easter is the culmination and the act that holds Christianity and our community together.
It is the act of love, of Christ dying for all, and the act of Christ dying for forgiveness and bringing us together around him.
It is interesting to think about the fact that it might be a 23 hour flight away yet, on that same day, people in my home country will be participating in a ritual the same as I will here, the same as people will in Africa and China.
No matter where you are the resurrection is uniting people.
That is also seen in communion.
Whenever you take communion you are not celebrating communion just with yourself or with your family or even with your local church, but worldwide.
Those things in a sense are always orientating for us.
There is a sense in that case, no matter how far you are away, you are still in some sense together because of Christ and because of all Christ has done.
I think there is a powerfulness in that.
It is not just limited to Easter; it is this whole idea of being the body of Christ worldwide, no matter the language.
His birth changes the calendar and his resurrection gives impetus to this movement that changed history.
What could very well have started out as a small belief in a little backwater Roman province eventually brings down the Emperor.
That act is so significant for history that it unities us and in that sense it unities us not just across the world but across time.
