Easter...

(Written while listening to to Nearer, My God, To Thee...click and listen, especially to the last verse beginning at 3:30.  Wow, just plain wow...)

What does Easter mean, to you?  Is it a spring holiday?  Is it sharing time with friends and family, maybe a small family reunion?

Go back a couple thousand years, consider the events of a week in Jerusalem.  A man - proclaiming himself to be the King of the Jews and challenging the religious establishment that had lasted hundreds if not thousands of years - this man entered the city on a donkey.  This peasant carpenter's son though, had the religious leaders scared.  He healed people.  He proclaimed himself as the living water, the bread of life, the Son of God.  Blasphemous!  How dare He say such things.  He must be silenced, the leaders thought.  They plotted, schemed.  But the people knew that this carpenter was no peasant.  He offered something refreshing, a new covenant.  They had seen the miracles with their own eyes.  Lazarus was alive, lepers were clean and healed, blind could see because of this Bethlehem carpenter.  He had a following, and people believed in him.  How could they not, with what they had seen?  Until now, they had lived under generations of Mosaic law.  That same prophets that gave them law also told of a messiah.  The people recognized this carpenter as that Messiah...He was the real deal for them.  But He presented a direct challenge to the "establishment" and those in power.  Their self-interest in preserving that power clouded their ability to see who He really is.

The people were rejoicing in His coming to Jerusalem.  They wanted Him to challenge the religious leaders.  They expected Him to overthrow their rule and establish His kingdom.  He would, not as people expected though.  He would, just as prophecy said He would.

In days, the people would see the drama shift from a triumphal entry into the city to that of a horror of mockery, torture, humiliation and death.  The promise would be stripped bare, beaten to near death (link to medical article written by a Mississippi physician), then sent on a forced march through the city to a rocky outcrop near the edge of town.  He would have nails driven through his wrists and feet, hoisted high upon a cross for the entire town to witness, then left to die between two thieves.  But even then, he challenged the religious establishment by telling one thief that they would be in Paradise together that very day.  When He breathed his last though, people knew this was no charismatic carpenter, nor was he the local psychotic.  The sky went black, the earth trembled beneath the city.  Even the religious leaders had to ask themselves what they had unleashed when the great temple's veil into the Holy of Holies was torn from the top down.

But....the witnesses were human.  They saw Him die.  Dead, just like the two thieves beside Him.  The healer, the miracle worker was gone.  The hope they had quickly faded.  His followers hid in fear their own lives would be demanded next by the religious leaders.  Hope was gone.  It was finished.

But had they forgotten the prophecies?  The leaders hadn't...they posted guards at His grave, just to make sure.

A couple of days later, because there hadn't been enough time to prepare His body, some ladies went to the tomb.  I can imagine it was like going back to the grave of one of our own loved ones, a few days after a funeral.  A long drive, still grasping for ways to fill the new void in your life.  It's a somber trip, knowing that we'll see the fresh pile of dirt, covered over with flowers from friends.

When the ladies got to the tomb though, they were baffled.  Two people, in radiant white clothing were in the now open tomb.  "What is this, who are you?", the ladies ask.  My sarcastic mind wants to think the two messengers probably looked at each other, rolled their eyes, then looked back at the ladies and said something like, "Are yall really surprised at this?  Didn't He tell you He'd come back from this grave?  Had yall given up on Him that quickly???"

The truth is, we still give up that quickly and easily.  We get "religious" and stuck in our ruts, trying to do the things/actions that others (leaders?) tell us we need to do to be right with the church...etc etc etc.  I could go on....  But the truth is that that New Covenant is ALIVE!  He's waiting for us, He wants us.  He's told us "the time is coming when I will make a new covenant with them...for I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." (Jeremiah 31)

Don't give up!  Ever!!!  You can't out-sin God.  Nothing you do surprises Him.  All He asks is that you love Him, and put Him first in your life.  Does being saved mean we'll never sin?  HA!  No, we'll sin...it's in our nature.  But He understands.  He really does.....