Easter Season (March 23 to May 10)

I've been thinking a lot about the resurrection and its implications for me (us) today as a follower of Jesus. I have lived in a faith tradition that normally sees Easter as a one day event, but have come to appreciate an alternate keeping of time coming down through the ages - namely the Christian calendar.

It is in this keeping of time that I am learning that Easter is not a one day event, but a 50 day celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. It is a season of great astonishment and joy which culminates with the day of Pentecost when the gift of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the church is celebrated.

So this year, not only do I wish to participate in Lent (which I've done), but I want to spend the next 49 days pondering, living out, asking questions about, being astonished and humbled at the Resurrection of my Lord!

Some Easter thoughts by a favorite author:
The world has already been turned upside down; that’s what Easter is all about. It isn’t a matter of waiting until God eventually does something at the end of time. God has brought his future, his putting-his-world into rights future, into the presence of Jesus of Nazareth and he wants that future to be implicated more and more in the present. That’s what we pray for every time we say the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth at it is in heaven.”

… if Lent is a time to give things up, then Easter ought to be a time to take things up.

Easter is a time to sow new seeds and to plant out a few cuttings. If Calvary means to put things to death in your life that need killing off if you are to flourish as a Christian and as a truly human being, then Easter should mean planting, watering and training things up in your life (personal and corporate) that ought to be blossoming, filling the garden with color and perfume and in due course bearing fruit.

All right, the Sundays after Easter still lie within the Easter season. We still have Easter readings and hymns during them. But Easter week itself ought not to be the time when all clergy sigh with relief and go on holiday. It ought to be an eight-day festival, with champagne served after morning prayer or even before, with lots of alleluias and extra hymns and spectacular anthems. It is any wonder people find hard to believe in the resurrection of Jesus if we don’t throw our hats in the air? Is it any wonder we find it hard to live the resurrection if we don’t do it exuberantly in our liturgies? It is any wonder the world doesn’t take much notice if Easter is celebrated as simple the one-day happy ending tacked on to forty days of fasting and gloom? It’s long over due that we took a hard look at how we keep Easter in church, at home, in our personal lives, right through the system. And if it means rethinking some cherished habits, well, maybe it’s time to wake up.

+NT Wright

HE IS RISEN!!!

HE IS RISEN INDEED!!!

Remembering...

In the Christian calendar, Lent officially ends at sundown today. It ends, in many cases, with readings from John 13 - Jesus washing the disciples feet and the eating of the Passover meal that Jesus ate with His disciples. In many gatherings around the world, those assembled will wash one another's feet to re-enact what Jesus did and then they will partake of the bread and the cup together.

Then, as Phyllis Tickle writes, "in stark silence, those serving at the altar will clear away the vessels that have held the wine and bread. They will take such bits and pieces of consecrated bread and wine as may be left and lock them out of both sight and reach in a niche or sanctuary in the chancel wall.

They will clear away next all the cloths and fair linen that have draped the altar, bringing basins of water to wash the altar down, as people watch, many of them crying. No part of the sacred meal may be left. All trace of it must be obliterated. The altar of God's presence is closed while all of Heaven and earth together mourn what is being recalled. Last, the priest or pastor extinguishes the sanctuary light or lamp. It will not burn again until the Easter Vigil when, just after midnight, the cry will go up: He is risen! He is risen indeed!"

I don't know how you will spend the next 3 days. You may attend a gathering or you may not, but I hope that you participate in some sort of remembering. Remembering the story, remembering His life, remembering His death, remembering the groaning of all creation as God is laid to rest in a tomb, then remembering Sunday morning, and remembering to cry out, "He is risen!! He is risen indeed!!"