Easter

Sadly, we throw Easter away year after year.  It comes and goes in just a day.  All too often we are happy when it's over.  We must celebrate it more.  For Easter is about the wild delight of Gods creative power – I know, it’s not very Lutheran maybe.  We ought to shout the Alleluias instead of mumbling them.  We should light every candle in the building instead of just some.  We should give everyone a candle to hold – man, woman, and little child.   We should splash water all over as we remember our baptism.

And maybe the bigger problem is with Easter Monday – we spend forty days of self-denial – pondering what it means and its all gloomy and then have just one day of celebration, and for many not even a whole day of celebration.  Easter week – it shouldn’t be the sigh of relief and time for clergy to go on a vacation.  Easter week should be an eight day feast with champagne served after morning and evening prayer- with lots of alleluias extra hymns and spectacular anthems.

Is it any wonder we have a hard time believing the resurrection if we don’t throw our hat in the air?  Is it any wonder that the world doesn’t take notice if Easter is just celebrated as a simple one day ending to a 40 day fast and gloom?     

We must remember that the church is about Easter.  This is what we are here to proclaim, to celebrate and to live.  If we were to take Christmas away - you don’t lose much – just two chapters at the beginning of Matthew and Luke and nothing else.  Now, take Easter away and you don’t have the New Testament – you don’t have Christianity – and as Paul says – you are still in your sins.

Don’t let the world with its schedules and habits and semi-religious events and its cute Easter bunny blow us off course – this is our greatest day.  Let this be a celebration – celebrate Jesus – celebrate the empty tomb.

Now of course you need to weed the garden of your life from time to time – the weeds can sometimes get really in there and the thistles and dandelions can take over – That’s Lent for you.  But you don’t just turn a garden into blank earth – there’s no beauty in just a patch of over turned soil – You turn it over to plant something in it.  Easter is a time to sow new seeds and plant some cuttings and let the life of God come about.

The cross is putting to death things in life that need to be killed if you are to flourish as human being – and so Easter means planting and watering and training up things that ought to bloom fill the garden with color and smells and in due course it bears fruit.