Rev Aaron Long: It’s Easter

It’s Easter

Happy Easter Ya’ll! It is the blessed season where we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  It’s the season where our salvation was made secure.  It’s the season where we remember that our life has been changed completely, that we have been adopted by God and made His children, co-inheritors of all of creation with Jesus.

I am going to get something out of the way here right off the bat, its Easter, easter isn’t pagan, its simply the English way of referring to the day and the season.  To many ignorant and low information people try to convince people otherwise.  Them doing that just shows they do not have a solid grasp of the English language or the historical situation.  Easter has nothing to do with Ishtar, it has nothing to do with Eostere, it has nothing to do with paganism.  Easter comes from an old German word meaning spring and after the conversion of the Anglo Saxons it was associated with the holiday.

In other languages the season is some version of the word Pascha, which related it to the Passover.  This is because Jesus is the fulfillment of the Passover.  During the Passover the jews were commanded to slaughter the perfect lamb and mark their doors with the lamb’s blood so that the angel of death would Passover their houses.  Jesus is as John the Baptist called Him, the Lamb of God sent to take away the sins of the world.  On the cross Jesus bore our sins, bore the punishment of hell for us, that we might be marked with His blood so that death no longer has claim over us.  In looking at easter we are looking into eternity.  Jesus had to face His death on the cross during the Passover in order to save all men from Hell, death, and sin.

Now that the history lesson is over with, why do we reverence the season of Easter as much as we do?  (And yes, it’s a season.  It runs from Easter Sunday till Pentecost.)  Easter is the season of rebirth.  We are coming out of the season of repentance in lent and looking now forward to the joys of eternal life with Christ.  We recognize we are made anew, born again.  Our old man is dead, and the new Christ is growing within us.  We are called daily in this season to conform ourselves more and more to the likeness of Jesus Christ, to transform our lives through the power of the Holy Spirit.

We are called to remember we are dead to sin, that we need to put aside those old ways of selfishness and cruelty and embrace truth, and grace, and love.  We need to learn that as Christ died for us so also, we are called to die to ourselves and live for others.

Happy Easter ya’ll! I pray that it is a joyous one and that you are born anew into eternity.