The Meaning of Easter

Easter is without doubt the most important of the Christian Festivals and yet it is probably the most difficult to understand. Many non-believers look at Christmas with all its fantasies like Santa Claus and other pagan overlays and assume that Easter is likewise a story rather than a real event which matters to people today. So what should we make of Easter?  Did it really happen the way the Bible suggests? Did a man really come back to life after being dead for two days?

What does the Bible actually say?

The story of Easter is seen as the climax of Jesus’ life. Strange really – most people are remembered for the things they achieved in their life but Jesus is heralded for his death and resurrection as well as his life. The biblical account, which appears in various forms in all four gospels tells that Jesus had caused such a stir among the religious elite that they plotted to kill him and used one of his followers, Judas, to assist in his arrest. What follows is a hastily convened trial where no conclusive evidence was produced about Jesus’ offence and this resulted in his crucifixion and the release of another criminal, Barabbas, as a gesture of goodwill towards the crowds.

Crucifixion took place on what we call Good Friday so that it was all out of the way before the Jewish Sabbath and Passover on the Saturday. Once pronounced dead, Jesus was hastily placed in the tomb of Joseph of, a high-ranking religious leader yet sympathiser of Jesus.

Saturday, the Sabbath passed, and because the burial was hasty and incomplete, a group of women went to the tomb on Sunday in the early morning to complete his anointing for burial. The principle woman in this account is Mary Magdalene who seems to arrive first and is startled, not only by the fact that the security stone at the entrance of the tomb had been rolled away, but that she met Jesus in person, although she struggled to recognise him, mistaking him at first for a gardener. She runs back to the other followers, and Peter and John then run to the tomb to see for themselves. John, the more thoughtful one, seems to take it all in when he sees the empty tomb but Peter, who was far more emotional and reactionary still can’t gt his head around it all, even though he saw the tomb empty.

The fact remains that Jesus’ closest followers, although they experienced sightings of Jesus risen from the dead, were less than convinced and the sightings themselves were shrouded in mystery. On one occasion in John’s Gospel, Jesus walks through a door in a ghostlike fashion (John 20:19ff - On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders,Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”  After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord). Even as late as Jesus final conversation with his followers when he gave them ‘the Great Commission’ (Matthew 28:16-20), the Gospel records that some of them still doubted (v17 - When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted). Not exactly convincing is it?

However, the entire Christian message is founded on this one key event – that Jesus rose from the dead.

Did Jesus really die and rise from the dead?

Of course, the only way we can know for sure is to travel back in time with a camcorder and record for ourselves what actually happened on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Historically, it is pretty well proven that a Galilean man noted for his miraculous healings and teaching was handed over to the Romans to be crucified (the Jews were not permitted to carry out the death penalty). What remains a matter of faith is what followed. I have already said that the Gospel accounts of the resurrection are mysterious to say the least. The different Gospels come at it differently and seemingly contradict each other as to who was present on Easter Sunday and what they did.

A number of alternative suggestions have been put forward to suggest what happened, even in the Gospels themselves (Matthew 28:12 - When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’). Some suggested that the followers who met with the risen Jesus were hallucinating or that they were so distraught that they imagined he was still alive.
The real clinchers are these:-

If the disciples had stolen the body then why would they spend the rest of their lives telling everybody what they knew was a lie? Why did they devote their entire lives to this and suffer imprisonment, torture and death for a lie? If Jesus had not risen from the dead, all that was needed was for someone to produce his dead body and the whole thing would be over. And yet, despite their best efforts, even the Roman authorities could not produce his body.

Jesus said he would rise again. It’s one thing for a dramatic event like this to happen, but Jesus had told his followers on several occasions that they should expect it to happen (Mark 8:31 - He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.). Having said that, the disciples of Jesus weren’t  convinced about this and remained sceptical until many weeks after Jesus’ resurrection. What sealed it for them was Pentecost which took place 7 weeks after Easter.

So What?

Ok, so it’s a great story – it may well have happened – but what difference does it make to me here in the 21st century? After all Jesus was a Jewish teacher who apparently came primarily for the Jewish people as their Messiah.

Jesus was the Son of God

However we may understand the term ‘Son of God’, what the resurrection seems to conclude is that all that was written in the Old Testament about a Suffering Servant (Isaiah chapter 53) found its expression in Jesus at Easter Time. It suggests that what Jesus endured was not simply an inevitable consequence of a righteous man suffering at the hands of corrupt leaders (something that happens all the time today), but that it was the fulfilment of a divine plan. Also, it was not purely for show to demonstrate that God’s power could bring someone back to life.  (Isaiah 53:4&5 - Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.)

Undoubtedly, the death and resurrection of Jesus is a deep theological mystery which has to be studied from a spiritual angle rather that purely looking at the forensic evidence. When a soldier dies in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban, his death can be explained in two ways.

He stood on a landmine and that was that!

He offered his life to fight an enemy who was out to destroy the rest of us and he suffered death in the process. The same two reasons could be applied to Jesus. But who was the enemy Jesus was protecting us from? Well, look at your TV screens at what’s happening in Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan or on the streets of London or Manchester in gang violence. Wherever you look, there are clear signs that people seem to be incapable of living peacefully together. The hunger for power, wealth and self-gratification all too often overflows into physical violence or even death towards our fellow man. Why? Could it be that there is a powerful and evil force at work within the world which pollutes all of us to some degree or another. For most of us we are brought up to live moral lives and would not resort to violence against others to fulfil our natural desires but there are still traces of jealousy, anger, impatience and discontent even in the most righteous of people.

What made the difference?

What followed after Easter and Pentecost was the formation of what we now call ‘The Church’. This is not a set of buildings which populate cities and villages, but a body of people focusing their lives on Jesus. They respect and observe his teachings and trust him for life’s big decisions. The buildings are places they meet for worship and come in all shapes and sizes.

What Christians have discovered however is that focusing their lives upon Jesus makes a profound difference to the way they live their lives, the values they aspire to and the way they treat other people. In short, Jesus has the ability of slowly, but surely, destroying the evil influences which lead to harm and destruction if given free reign. To put it another way, the Spirit of Jesus takes up residence in his believers and transforms people from within.

But what about the resurrection?

Do we need to believe in the resurrection in order to be good people? Of course, the answer to this is ‘no’. But we do need to ask ‘where does morality come from in the first place?’ I would be the first to admit that there are some extremely moral and loving people who do not hold to Christian faith. But where did this sense of love and morality come from? Is it something we inherit from our parents, something we learn as life unfolds or is there another explanation? Could it be that God is at work within us even though we may not acknowledge his presence?

Justice will rule in the end

But what is important about the resurrection is what it says about God’s divine plan for humanity. We would all like to believe that death is not the end. We would all like to believe that the injustices we suffer in this world will be put right one day. We would all like to believe that those who deliberately caused hurt and pain to others simply to gratify their own hunger for power, wealth or security will have to face the consequences before God. In Matthew 5:3-10 (known as the Beatitudes) Jesus offered some profound insights into God’s divine plan for humanity. In verse 10 he says ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ Perhaps Jesus saw beyond the pain and suffering of life to a better way of living – he called it ‘the kingdom of heaven’. It is not so much a place but a way of being where God’s loving purposes are perfectly seen in all aspects of life.  Jesus left us with ‘the Lord’s Prayer’ which has the words ‘your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’ (Matthew 6:10).  It was his earnest desire that the justice and goodness of ‘the kingdom of heaven’ should be spread throughout the world.

Beyond Belief

One of the inescapable facts of the Easter accounts in the Gospels is how slow the followers of Jesus were to come to terms, especially with the resurrection. To repeat what happened in Matthew 28:17, Jesus was on the brink of leaving his followers for the final time and some still doubted. We don’t read that Jesus put his head in his hands in despair because they still didn’t ‘get it’. One of the tensions we all face is making sense of an experience which our minds simply can’t explain and which defies scientific explanation. Think of the most dramatic moments in your life – passing a big exam, falling in love, giving birth to a child. The mind plays a back-seat role in these moments. You simply experience them and treasure the memories. So it was with the resurrection – the meaning behind it followed much later. No wonder the Gospels have such differing accounts of what happened at this time.

One final thought. We may never be able to explain what actually happened on that first Easter. Even having the camcorder in our hands might not have given us the full answer. But there are many things in life which are beyond explanation. One of these is the self-sacrifice which goes into bringing up a child. We see beyond the skin and bones of the bundle which lays in our arms to a life full of potential – potential to love and make a positive difference in the world, potential to become a scientist or great musician or peace ambassador. Our imagination and emotions take over. But is it worth the pain and sacrifice involved in parenthood? Of course it is – it’s what we were made for and what gives us true fulfilment in life. So perhaps the death of Jesus, for all its gruesome details was a necessary part of God’s divine plan. The more we experience love, the more we find that words are inadequate to explain it. Love has to be experienced rather than explained scientifically. So it is with Easter.

Happy Easter.