Every Easter our church stages an elaborate pageant. Last year the man who played Pontius Pilate had to work on the night of the dress rehearsal, and a chorus member substituted for him. As we began rehearsing Pilate’s solo, the conductor stopped the orchestra. “Pilate, I don’t hear you,” he called out. “You’re not loud enough.” “Pilate is at work,” a voice on the stage shouted back. “We’ve got our co-Pilate tonight.”
It was hard explaining to the cat that the kids’ Easter basket was NOT a yuppie litter box.
I asked my teenage son if he was going to sunrise service on Easter. He said, “What’s a sunrise?” It’s a beautiful Easter custom, but the only way I’ll ever get to a sunrise service is if they hold it at noon.
The pastor’s a little worried that not many people will show up for sunrise service. I told him to start the choir singing at 5 AM. That way, the whole neighborhood would be up.
I came from a very poor family. For Easter, we colored potatoes. Even when we had a good year, we could only afford black and white Easter eggs. We couldn’t afford an Easter Bunny, so we took the rabbit ears off the TV and put them on the cat. I’ll never forget one Easter when I was a kid. My mother got me a real bunny. Talk about disillusioned. I waited all day for that dumb rabbit to lay an Easter egg. All I got was raisins!
Times change. Instead of buying a new Easter dress for Sunday, the teenager next door is just dying her legs purple.
Easter offers a special lesson for writers and movie and TV producers. Remember, gang, the greatest story ever told was rated “G.”
Easter Truth
The great Easter truth is not that we are to live newly after death—that is not the great thing—but that we care to be new here and now by the power of the Resurrection; not so much that we are to live forever, as that we are to, and may, live nobly now because we are to live forever. –Phillips Brooks
A Child’s Version of the Meaning of Easter
Our three-year-old, Nicole, was as anxious for Easter to come as she had been for Christmas to come. Since my wife was expecting our third child in just a few weeks, many persons were giving us baby gifts since this was our first child in this church. Nicole had picked out a new dress and Mom had given her a new white bonnet. As we stopped at a store to buy her a new pair of shoes to go with her outfit, she once again said, “I can’t wait for Easter, Daddy?” I asked her, “Do you know what Easter means, honey?” She replied, “Yes.” “Well, what does Easter mean?” In her own sweet three-year-old way, with arms raised, a smile on her face, and at the top of her voice she said, “Surprise!” What a better word could sum up the meaning of Easter? Surprise, death! Surprise, sin! Surprise, mourning disciples! Surprise, modern man! He’s alive!
Easter Crown
Crowns have always been the sign of authority and Kingship. Charlemagne, whom historians say should deserve to be called “great” above all others, wore an octagonal crown. Each of the eight sides was a plaque of gold, and each plaque was studded with emeralds, sapphires, and pearls. The cost was the price of a king’s ransom. Richard the Lion Heart had a crown so heavy that two earls had to stand, one on either side, to hold his head. The crown Queen Elizabeth wears is worth over $20 million. Edward II once owned nine crowns, something of a record. Put them all together, from all of Europe and from the archives of the East, all of them are but trinkets compared to Christ’s crown. Revelation 19 says He had many diadems. He wears a crown of righteousness. He wears a crown of glory. He wears a crown of life. He wears a crown of peace and power. Among those crowns, one outshines the rest. It was not formed by the skilled fingers of a silversmith, nor created by the genius of a craftsman. It was put together hurriedly by the rough hands of Roman soldiers. It was not placed upon it’s wearer’s head in pomp and ceremony, but in the hollow mockery of ridicule and blasphemy. It is a crown of thorns.
The amazing thing is that it belonged to me. I deserved to wear that crown. I deserved to feel the thrust of the thorns. I deserved to feel the warm trickle of blood upon my brow. I deserved the pain. He took my crown of thorns—but without compensation. He offers to me instead His crown of life, the crown that fadeth not away.
Spring and Resurrection
Green the grass. Ripe the bud. Yellow the flower. Blue the sky. Beautiful the butterfly. Risen the Lord!
Ready for Resurrection Morning
A true story is told about a distinguished man, the only white person buried in a Georgia cemetery reserved exclusively for blacks. He had lost his mother when he was just a baby. His father, who never married again, hired a black woman named Mandy to help raise his son. She was a Christian, and she took her task seriously. Seldom has a motherless boy received such warmhearted attention. One of his earliest memories was of Mandy bending tenderly over him in his upstairs bedroom each day and softly saying, “Wake up—God’s mornin’ is come.”
As the years passed this devoted woman continued to serve as his surrogate mother. The young man went away to college, but when he would come home on holidays and in the summer, she would still climb the stairs and call him in the same loving way. One day after he had become a successful statesman, the sad message came: “Mandy is dead. Can you attend her funeral?” As he stood by her grave in the cemetery, he turned to his friends and said, “If I die before Jesus comes, I want to be buried here beside Mandy. I like to think that on Resurrection Day she’ll speak to me again and say, “Wake up, my boy, God’s mornin’ is come!”
Let Loose
In the drama The Trial of Jesus, John Masefield has the centurion Longinus report to Pilate after the crucifixion of Jesus. Longinus had been the officer in charge of the execution, and after his official report, Procula, Pilate’s wife, calls the centurion to come and tell her how the prisoner had died. Once the account is given, she asks, “Do you think he is dead?” Longinus answers, “No, lady, I don’t.” “Then where is He?” asks Procula. Longinus replies, “Let loose in the world, lady, where neither Roman nor Jew can stop His truth.”
Beyond the Cross
Every year thousands of people climb a mountain in the Italian Alps, passing the “stations of the cross” to stand at an outdoor crucifix. One tourist noticed a little trail that led beyond the cross. He fought through the rough thicket and, to his surprise, came upon another shrine, a shrine that symbolized the empty tomb. It was neglected. The brush had grown up around it. Almost everyone had gone as far as the cross, but there they stopped.
Far too many have gotten to the cross and have known the despair and the heartbreak. Far too few have moved beyond the cross to find the real message of Easter. That is the message of the empty tomb. –Lavon Brown
The Weightier Stone
The heavy, ponderous stone that sealed Jesus in the confines of that rock-walled tomb was but a pebble compared to the Rock of Ages inside.
A Bible with a Sad Ending
Thomas Jefferson, a great man, nevertheless could not accept the miraculous elements in Scripture. He edited his own special version of the Bible in which all references to the supernatural were deleted. Jefferson, in editing the Gospels, confined himself solely to the moral teachings of Jesus. The closing words of Jefferson’s Bible are these: “There laid they Jesus and rolled a great stone at the mouth of the sepulcher and departed.” Thank God that is not the way the story really ends!
The Miracle of Easter Blossoms
There is an old legend of a priest who found a branch of a thorn tree twisted around so that it resembled a crown of thorns. Thinking is a symbol of the crucifixion, he placed it on the altar in his chapel on Good Friday. Early on Easter morning, he remembered what he had done. Feeling it was not appropriate for Easter Sunday, he hurried into the church to clear it away before the congregation came. But when he went into the church, he found the thorn branches blossoming with beautiful roses.
Resurrected but Scarred
If God raised Jesus from the dead, why didn’t God fix Him up? Why scars? Why the print of nails that you could feel with your fingers? Can it be that the gospel words is saying to us in our waiting: “You will not Jesus Christ unless you see the wounds?” Somehow we must understand that the resurrected Christ is forever the wounded Christ. Living, but never fixed up. Not bound by death, yet scarred for eternity.
The deaf have a sign for Jesus. Quickly they make this sign many times during their worship: the middle finger of each hand is placed into the palm of the other. Jesus, the one with wounded hands. And when they touch the place, they remember. They hear the name in their own flesh. –John Vannorsdall
He Lives Today
I remember the witness of Bishop Lajos Ordass of the Lutheran Church in Hungary to a small group gathered at the Lutheran World Federation assembly in Minneapolis in 1957. As bishop, he protested the Communist regime’s confiscation of church schools and was imprisoned for twenty months. Later he was under arrest for six years. He was a tall stately man, and I can still see his ashen face as he quietly told his story.
“They placed me in solitary confinement. It was a tiny cell, perhaps six feet by eight feet, with no windows, and soundproofed. They hoped to break down my resistance by isolating me from all sensory perceptions. They thought I was alone. They were wrong. The risen Christ was present in that room, and in communion with Him I was able to prevail.” –Andrew Wyermann
The Fog Lifted
In was June 18, 1815, the Battle of Waterloo. The French under the command of Napoleon were fighting the Allies (British, Dutch, and Germans) under the command of Wellington. The people of England depended on a system of semaphore signals to find out how the battle was going. One of these signal stations was on the tower of Winchester Cathedral.
Late in the day it flashed the signal: “W-E-L-L-I-N-G-T-O-N—D-E-F-E-A-T-E-D–.” Just at that moment, one of those sudden English fog clouds made it impossible to read the message. The news of defeat quickly spread throughout the city. The whole countryside was sad and gloomy when they heard the news that their country had lost the war. Suddenly the fog lifted, and the remainder of the message could be read. The message had four words, not two. The complete message was: Wellington defeated the enemy!” It took only a few minutes for the good news to spread. Sorrow was turned into joy, defeat was turned into victory!
So it was when Jesus was laid in the tomb on the first Good Friday afternoon. Hope had died even in the hearts of Jesus’ most loyal friends. After the frightful crucifixion, the fog of disappointment and misunderstanding had crept in on the friends of Jesus. They had “read” only part of the message. “Christ defeated” was all that they knew. But then on the third day—Easter Sunday—the fog of disappointment and misunderstanding lifted, and the world received the complete message: “Christ defeated death!” Defeat was turned into victory; death was turned to life!
God’s Marvelous Easter Chemistry
A workman of the great chemist Michael Faraday accidentally knocked a silver cup into a solution of acid. It was promptly dissolved, eaten up by the acid. The workman was terribly disturbed by the accident. The chemist came in and put a chemical into the jar, and shortly all the silver was precipitated to the bottom. The shapeless mass was lifted out and sent to the silversmith, and the cup was restored to its original shape. If a human genius can do a thing like this, why should we doubt that God can raise the dead?
The Last Word
The simplest meaning of Easter is that we are living in a world in which God has the last word. On Friday night, it appeared as if evil were the master of life. The holiest and most lovable One Who had ever lived was dead and in His tomb, crucified by the order of a tyrant without either scruples or regrets. He who had raised the highest hopes among men had died by the most shameful means. A cross, two nails, a jeering mob of debauched souls, and a quick thrust of a spear had ended it all. Those hours when His voice was still and His hands were quiet were the blackest through which the race has ever lived. If Caesar could put an end to Jesus, then no man could ever dare aspire or hope again. Hope, in such a world, could be nothing better than a mockery. Then came Easter morning and the glorious word: “He is risen!” And evil’s triumph was at an end. Since that hour when Mary in the garden first discovered the staggering fact of victory, no man whose heart was pure and whose labors were honest has ever had reason to fear or despair if he believed in the resurrection. –Paul Hovey
A Voice to Shout
On the Easter just before he died, D. William Sangster painfully printed a short note to his daughter. A deeply spiritual Methodist, he had been spearheading a renewal movement in the British Isles after World War II. Then his ministry, except for prayer, was ended by a disease which progressively paralyzed his body, even his vocal chords. But the last Resurrection Sunday he spent on earth, still able to move his fingers, he wrote: “How terrible to wake up on Easter and have no voice to shout, ‘He is risen!’ Far worse, to have a voice and not want to shout.”
Easter Affirmation
About 1930, the Communist leader Bukharin journeyed from Moscow to Kiev. His mission was to address a huge assembly. His subject, atheism. For a solid hour, he aimed his heavy artillery at Christianity, hurling argument and ridicule. At last, he was finished and viewed what seemed to be the smoldering ashes of men’s faith. “Are there any questions?” Bukharin demanded. A solitary man arose and asked permission to speak. He mounted the platform and moved close to the Communist. The audience was breathlessly silent as the man surveyed them first to the right, then to the left. At last he shouted the ancient Orthodox greeting, “CHRIST IS RISEN!” The vast assembly arose as one man and the response came crashing like the sound of an avalanche, “HE IS RISEN INDEED!”
I’ve Taken Your Sting
A little boy and his father were driving down a country road on a beautiful spring afternoon. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a bumblebee flew in the car window. Since the little boy was deathly allergic to bee stings, he became petrified. But the father quickly reached out, grabbed the bee, squeezed it in his hand, and then released it. But as soon as he let it go, the young son became frantic once again as it buzzed by the little boy. His father saw his panic-stricken face. Once again the father reached out his hand, but this time he pointed to his hand. There still stuck in his skin was the stinger of the bee. “Do you see this?” he asked. “You don’t need to be afraid anymore. I’ve taken the sting for you.” And this is the message of Easter. We do not need to be afraid of death anymore. Christ faced death for us. And by His victory, asks: “Where, oh death, is your sting?” Christ has taken the stinger for us. He has risen! Fear is gone. New life is ours.
Which Is More Difficult?
What reason have atheists for saying that we cannot rise again? Which is the more difficult—to be born or to rise again? Is it more difficult to come into being than to return to it? –Blaise Pascal
If Easter Means Anything
If Easter means anything to modern man, it means that eternal truth is eternal. You may nail it to the tree, wrap it up in grave clothes, and seal it in a tomb. But truth crushed to earth shall rise again. Truth does not perish. It cannot be destroyed. It may be distorted. It has been silenced temporarily. It has been compelled to carry its cross to Calvary’s brow or to drink the cup of poisoned hemlock in a Grecian jail, but with an inevitable certainty after every Black Friday dawns truth’s Easter morn. –Donald Harvey Tippet
No More Fear
The Easter message tells us that our enemies, sin, the curse, and death, are beaten. Ultimately, they can no longer start mischief. They still behave as though the game were not decided, the battle not fought; we must still reckon with them, but fundamentally we must cease to fear them any more. –Karl Barth