Easter, or "He's Risen!" Weekend

You know, it's amazing. Christmas has become such an enormous holiday. It is such a cultural phenomenon that non-Christians often partake at least as heartily as Christians. The gift-giving, the food, the whole package. But Easter, Easter we don't see that kind of buy-in. From the Christian perspective, this would seem to be the more significant observance. Yes, at Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus. This is important. Without his birth, none of the rest of his life could have happened. But, God coming to earth was an event he had performed in other manners before. He had never been born of a virgin mother. But, he had been at the burning bush. He had done so many things in the Old Testament where his presence was manifest.

But, the week prior to Easter and Easter itself are the time we recognize a unique event. God, the Almighty, the Omnipotent, the Creator lets Himself be betrayed by a greedy accountant. He lets himself be physically abused in so many ways. He is beaten, spit upon, has a crown of thorns smashed onto his head, and is finally nailed to some wood, hung up to die and then stabbed with a spear. If the story ends here, the rest of his life prior to this point gets looked at in an all new perspective. This man would have been thought of as someone with some very ineresting social ideas (which were not at all en vogue) who had delusions of grandeur (He thought he was the son of God?). This had to have been what was going through people's minds on Saturday. Surely, those "miracles" that he performed weren't all that they were cracked up to be. I mean, yeah we saw them, but surely our eyes were mistaken.

However, the story doesn't end there. He comes back. Having spent his time redeeming us from our sins, He comes back to life. He rises. He seeks out his students, his followers and shares more with them. After a while, he goes back to heaven. Now this, this is different. We don't have this anywhere else. God sends a part of Himself down here, let's himself be born in a barn, lets Himself be saddled with the slings and arrows of daily life, shows us how to live, is killed for it, forgives us for that and everything else we have done or will do, and goes back home. To me this is the coolest holiday observance there could be.

But alas, it is not nearly as mass-marketable as Christmas. Toy manufacturers don't get nearly the boost from it. TV producers can't seem to come up with any programming for this holiday. Regardless of the way the rest of the world treats this time of year, don't forget to really share with your family the story and meaning of "He's Risen!" weekend.

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