Easter Sunday

Today's Easter celebration marks the end of Holy Week, in which we commemorate the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The resurrection of Jesus is the linchpin of the Christian faith.

In his first epistle to the Corinthians – written about twenty years after Jesus' resurrection, he says the following emphatically.

"And if Christ has not been raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your faith is useless. And we apostles would all be lying about God—for we have said that God raised Christ from the grave. But that can't be true if there is no resurrection of the dead. And if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless, and you are still guilty of your sins. In that case, all who have died believing in Christ are lost! And if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world." (1 Corinthians 15:14-19)

[As a footnote, it is important to point out here that St. Paul wrote the above based on the earliest reports of Jesus' resurrection he had received within months that he had risen from the dead (See 1 Corinthians 15:3-7). According to St Paul, there were more than five hundred first-hand eyewitnesses to the Risen Christ (1 Cor. 15: 5-8). Many of them were still around when Paul wrote his epistle, and he would have been quick to point out if there were any discrepancies in what he had been preaching and writing about.

Gary Habermas, the American historian and New Testament scholar lists thirty-nine ancient sources outside the Bible that provide more than one hundred facts about Jesus' life, teachings, death and resurrection (See Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ, College Press Publishing Company, Joplin, Missouri, 2008)]

Christians celebrate Easter, not just for historical reasons. Our belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the belief on which every other Christian belief rests. They are the beliefs about God; our Heavenly citizenship and heritage, God's revelation of Himself as Love; God's purposes and promises for this world and us in the Bible, our sojourn in this world, God's coming to us in Jesus; God drawing and receiving us back to Himself in Jesus; God's Angels who have been appointed to watch over and journey with us in this life; the testimony of God's saints, martyrs and prophets, the church and its purpose and witness in the world; and, the end of this world as we know it and the final consummation when God comes to be in all in all.

Because our Easter faith is the foundation of all these beliefs, Jesus' triumph over death on Easter wasn't just his triumph — it was ours, too. And because it is so, God draws us intimately to the profound joy of participating in the mystery of Easter. It is a mystery not because Easter is a riddle we cannot explain away with our scientism and the materialistic-reductionist tools we have but because our lives and individual selves are intricately woven into the tapestry of God in whom we are loved lavishly, accepted unconditionally and cherished forever with the gift of eternal life. The Bible tells us: "In him, we live and move and have our being." (Acts 17:28).

Now, let's try to explain all of this with the words and limited tools we have to explain the physical world we live in. I bet we would fall far short. That is why the Easter experience is a mystery. We know it, but we cannot explain it.

However, God speaks to us today through Easter, the event in which God raised Jesus from the dead. God tells us this: Each one of us, as a child of God in Jesus, is a part in whom the mystery of Easter is present in its whole.

How so?

Christians believe that Jesus's death and resurrection changed the world not just at a historical level—which it clearly did—but also at a spiritual level. By willingly going to the cross and then rising from the dead, Jesus tweaked the constants of the spiritual universe. Jesus has bridged our separation from God (what sin and death are about) by coming into this world.

In Jesus, the connection that we always have with God, but forgotten, weakened or lapsed because we are away from Home, is renewed and restored. When we were baptised, we washed away the layers of forgetfulness. We re-established ourselves to live in the experience of Easter as a child of God. For this reason, on Easter Day, we renew our Baptism vows. (Following this Reflection, you can renew your Baptism vows before God).

Because of Easter and the bridged cleavage between us and God, our faith is confirmed, sure, and secure. In this assurance, we may take to heart what the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews said: "Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see" (Heb. 11:1).