For Christians of all denominations, Easter is the most important day of the religious calendar – although from sheer public attention, Christmas manages to enjoy top billing.
While we Christians may differ on how to determine the day we observe Easter, with some using the Julian calendar and others, the Gregorian calendar; while we may articulate our faith in the Easter mystery according to different theological terms and systems; and while we may use a wide variety of ritual customs to celebrate Easter, for the overwhelming majority of Christians, Easter is the feast we share as the most significant day of our year.
Over the centuries, we Christians have borrowed liberally from cosmic and natural elements in our world to use as symbols of the celebration of the Easter mystery. Eggs and butterflies, lilies and bunnies, are all associated with this feast. These symbols remind us Easter occurs during the springtime when, in the Northern Hemisphere, the earth is undergoing its annual rebirth. But Easter is also a feast for those Christians who live in the Southern Hemisphere, and it is observed during their winter experience as they also celebrate Easter. The Christian mystery of Easter is far greater than its hemispheric context, and much more profound than any of the symbols we might use.
Christians believe Easter is the feast of Christ Risen from the dead. For us, it is a feast of the spiritual renewal of humanity accomplished first and perfectly in the Risen Christ and in him promised for all of us. As we encounter so many expressions of Easter, we may forget what we celebrate in Christ is also our own destiny. And we desperately need that promise, perhaps more today than at any time in recent memory.
As we face the brutality and violence that seems so entrenched in the Middle East, as we consider the inhumanity found within our own society with racial mistrust and misunderstanding, as we live with the corruption of so many once highly regarded institutions and individuals, we need the assurance of renewal and the rebirth that Easter promises.
Eggs, bunnies, butterflies and lilies may be quite charming and perhaps even somewhat helpful in recalling the mystery of Easter, but only the reality of celebrating the crucified one risen from the dead offers that hope for which we Christians continue to yearn. Christians in many parts of the world are even today being slaughtered for believing in the Easter mystery. These men and women are following the Christ as his modern-day martyrs because they believe in him and refuse to set aside their faith to be spared. The cost of discipleship, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer once reminded us, is always extremely high.
Easter for Christians is the very touchstone of our faith, and never have we conceivably needed the strength and the promise Easter offers more than we do today. Easter, for Christians, always comes after the suffering and death of Jesus. It is the divine consequence of his perfect self-surrender to the will of his Father. It gives hope to all who believe suffering and death are not the final sentence God speaks over humanity, even when these realities do so often seem to be the last word.
In our world of televised beheadings, income inequality, drug smuggling, neighborhood protests and riots and Ebola, the celebration of Easter continues to hearten people who believe that in Christ, all of these disasters will be but temporary in light of the new life the Lord Jesus now lives, and to which he invites us to believe we too will one day share with him.
Wilton D. Gregory is archbishop of Atlanta.
