Easter 2018-Yeah, yeah, Easter is on April Fools’ Day.Like many people, I sneer at the far too early Easter decorations during Lent and wish that they would continue on into Pentecost if possible. The little Easter egg hides and holds life.
God has a cosmic sense of humor as new life emerges from a grave. The gospel of Mark is a stark one, especially compare dot the soft focus children’s candy holiday we have made of it. Beyond proofs, he is not here-he is risen-Easter is a feast of the maternal aspect of god the life giver, the bearer of new life into a world of death. Karl Barth reminds us that in the Creed when we say buried, the person is robbed of a future and is not long in the present, but appears as an apparition only in the past.Easter has a floating date according to the Passover and the moon.It is for a new day, a new way of measuring time, as Christians change their Sabbath to sunday-one day past the traditional one.
For many of us, God seems so distant as to be dead to us. On Easter we get jolted that it is Death’s funeral-Is. 25 amy erickson we are well acquainted with the powers of death., God’s power of life is “Easter power, not mere sentiment. the Hebrew word for death (mwt) is related to the word that designates the god of death (Môt), whose appetite for human life is insatiable, his vast mouth, which threatens to swallow up life in the span of a breath. In Canaanite mythology, the storm/weather god Baal defeats Môt (Death) as well as Yam (Sea). This myth of the defeat of Death is cast on a cosmic, future stage. And here God opens up God's tremendous throat to swallow the swallower himself.
God is on the loose-this time perhaps incognito if using Mark 16-with a new body. We ignore the credal insistence on a resurrected body by making Easter a vision of a resurrected soul, a spiritual rising.The empty tomb radiates the light of life.
See Pauw (Wisdom Ecclesiology) on rejoicing-”Easter is God’s seal on a future of life and peace. Every church service is an Easter whisper, but on this day is has shouts of acclamation. God's joy in life itself, in new life is carried over by us with the choirs of heaven itself. That joy bid sus to join in the celebration of this life and its small or full occasions for enjoying life. ‘
We rejoice with nature itself-shining of our very life- Edwards infinite beauty of God's life and love- radiates from it- Yes we rejoice in this life too,. Even if incomplete-Berry-be joyful even in the face of all the facts.- on the road to imperishable life- tasteless to eschew the joys, pleasures, comforts of this life
I get anxious when the hymns blare out a promise that death has been defeated. If it is, Death certainly seems to retain a lot of power. No, it old Death continues to stand as the great opposition to God's covenant with life. Easter does not have us rise above struggle in life and with death as much as it allows us to live in unfeigned hope that God is with us in life beyond Churchly life as Col. 3:30 says is hidden in Christ with God.Communion exemplifies that.The joke is on /Death with Easter on April Fools’ Day. Easter smiles, ;laughs a in the face of reality. We foolish people know what Death fears. Life, new life, wins in the end.
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