“Yes, Lord! Yes, Lord! Yes, Yes, Lord!”

A recent survey by Barna indicates that only 2% of people in the United States identify Easter as the most important holiday of their faith. Less than half (42%) say that the meaning of Easter is the resurrection of Jesus or that it signifies Christ death and return to life. And yet 85% of people in the United States identify themselves as Christians. It seems there is a disconnect somewhere. The resurrection of Jesus is without a doubt the centerpiece of the Christian faith. How is possible that we could miss the significance?

Easy. Easter, like everything else in our culture gets co-opted by those seeking a profit. Profligate bunnies, psychedelic eggs, spring sentiments from Hallmark, and an afternoon all-you-can-eat gorging are more likely to be part of one’s Easter celebration than a reading of even one of the four resurrection narratives (Luke 24, John 20, Matthew 28, Mark 16). Even so, Easter loses out to the far more commercially viable and mass-marketable Christmas. In the United States we allow the market to define our faith. The survey says . . .

But what is Easter about really? Where can we actually experience it, if not at the $19.95 holiday brunch?

Our son, Sam, is home on break from his semester-long Border Studies Program. He has spent his semester thus far studying migration. The last five weeks he has been in Guatemala and Chiapas in southern Mexico. It has been an eye-opening time for him. He has learned of the Acteal massacre of 45 children, women and men who were murdered while attending church on December 22, 1997. He visited the church where this happened and what he saw was not despair, but hope. Hope in the eyes, the hearts, the hands of hospitality extended to him. Hope for basic human values of dignity and respect. Hope that death is not the end of our struggle. The bus driver for the trip, Julio Cesar, expressed his understanding of the resurrection in the shadow of this massacre when he told the students, “They tried to bury us, but they forgot we were seeds.”

The resurrection is not easy, pie-in-the-sky theology. The resurrection takes us right through the heart of human suffering, grief and pain. Jesus teaches us that we can’t go around it; we have to go through it. No matter how much we try to dress it up in gold and silver the cross is an ugly thing, an instrument of torture, a death machine. The cross is the ultimate expression of the world’s life-denying “No!” But God, in Jesus, takes the world’s ugliness, the world’s “No!” and fashions a “Yes!” Yes, life is ultimately good! Yes, we can live everyday in hope! Yes, we can serve others and work for the common good of all! Yes, peace and dignity and justice will come! Yes, God is with us!

So, if you’re not already in that 2% who recognize Easter as the most important holiday of the Christian faith, then how about you reconsider. Perhaps these words from Jesus might help: "Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you'll have it forever, real and eternal.” John 12:24-25 (The Message)

Let go and make Jesus’ resurrection your most important thing.

See you in church,
Pastor Rick