[Salvation]

March 30, 2005

The Ancient Easter Season

Records show that, besides celebrating Easter Sunday, an Easter Season of 50 days was celebrated as far back as the beginning of the third century. There was to be no fasting or kneeling. It was not a time for penitential practices. It was a time to exult in God’s goodness.

Why is the Easter Season so long? Because the resurrection is just too big and too important to celebrate in only one day, or even one week.

Why 50 days…not 10 or 20? Because the Jewish feast of Pentecost occurred 50 days after Passover, and this 50-day stretch between Passover and Pentecost was already in place.

For Christians, it became no longer simply a time between two Jewish feasts. It became one great feast, the longest feast ever. They called it “one great Sunday.” They also called it a “week of weeks” because it lasted seven weeks.

[Salvation]

Wednesday, First Week of Easter

They said to them, “Why do you seek the living one among the dead? He is not here, but he has been raised. Remember what he said to you while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners and be crucified, and rise on the third day.”

Luke 24:5-7

The message of the angels is clear: Jesus is “the living one.”

Jesus didn’t come to have a deadening effect upon the world, or upon anything. He came to bring life – God’s life. This life isn’t something that switches on after we die. It pulses within us now. Paul put it clearly.”

If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit that dwells in you. (Rom 8:11)

The Christian way of life has its challenges, but it is never meant to be dull, listless, blank, stale, flat.

That’s something worth remembering, especially on a bad day.

God’s life – God’s own life – is pulsing within me.

Now. This very moment.

Spend some quiet time with the Risen Lord.