The real meaning of Easter

Ask yourself the question, "What is the most important day of the year for us as Christians?  What is our biggest and most solemn celebration?"  I suspect that most people would say Christmas.  They are not entirely wrong since Christmas is the second most important day of the year.  However, by far, Easter is our biggest and most important celebration as Christians.


Why?  Why is Easter so important?  Some may think of Easter and Jesus' resurrection from the dead as God's way of "fixing" the crime that took place on Good Friday.  Or maybe some think of Jesus' resurrection as a symbolic story that really helps us to believe in heaven and God's final victory all the more.  Even worse would be if we only think of Easter as being about bunnies, eggs, and candy.

Well, this is NOT what Easter and the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus is really about.


The Bible begins with the words, "In the beginning."  If we are to fully understand what Easter is really about that is where we need to begin.  The resurrection is about creation.  I know this may sound odd or incorrect but I'd like to explain.

This is exactly what DID NOT happen!

God created the whole cosmos for a purpose.  It was not a random event because God had nothing else to do that week.  God created because it was His eternal will that He might share His love and share His life.  We are the ones who God chose to share His life and His love with.  We are in God's image and likeness for this specific reason.  God wants to make others like Himself and invite them to share in His inner life and His love.  We humans are those that God created to unite to Himself in love so that we can share His life.  In order to finish creation God had to become one of us.  To finish creation God had to became part of His creation and so He became incarnate and became a human being.


So, to make a long story short, creation, Jesus' birth, and resurrection from the dead is one event.  Creation got everything started and the Resurrection completed the act of creation.  When Jesus rose from the dead, body and soul, we saw, for the first time, what God wants our life to be like.  We saw, for the first time, what God's perfect and complete creation looks like.  Creation started with God and it is God who perfected it by His rising from the dead.


This may sound even more weird or strange but bear with me and I think I can make some sense.


When God created the cosmos so long ago His work of creation wasn't done yet.  He had a specific conclusion in mind for what He was doing.  He wanted to unite creation to Himself.  He didn't just want to make something and leave it there alone.  Rather God created so that he could join creation to Himself.

My favorite example of this is when (and this does not happen all that often) I cook my favorite meal of "bacon wrapped maple pork loin." When I cook that I usually do so with the intention of uniting it to myself... by eating it.  If you can forgive the bad analogy think of God as creating for the sole purpose of being united with it.  This final act did not take place until Jesus rose from the dead.  Jesus new life is what life looks like when it is completely united with God.


From the very beginning God wanted to invite creation (especially you and me and all other humans) into the inner life of the Holy Trinity.  God wanted to unite earth with Heaven (more on that in a bit).  The resurrection did this.  


It was the resurrection of Jesus that finally finished the work of creation that had begun so long ago.  At the resurrection Jesus finally united all of creation to God perfectly.  


Jesus resurrection from the dead is not just about defeating death but rather it is about finishing the act of creation.  By the Resurrection all of creation is re-created in Jesus as he was raised from the dead.  Jesus' new human life was transformed and different from before.  It was recreated in such a way that He will never die again and now his new human life is totally united with heaven.  For the very first time, since the beginning of the cosmos, heaven and earth were perfectly united in Jesus.  When that happened creation was finally completed!  God's will and plan for what He began so long ago has finally been finished when heaven and earth were perfectly united in the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead!


I know this is deep and possibly hard to understand but if we consider that Jesus' resurrection was not a response to our sin but rather Jesus' resurrection is the very reason that God began creation in the first place.  


This...

... and this...

..are the same act.  Creation came first and the resurrection of Jesus completed the act of creation.


The resurrection is also a beginning.  Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God when He was going around and preaching and working miracles.  This Kingdom of God is when God and His creation are united.

We pray for this every time we pray the "Our Father."  We say "Father... Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

When we say these words we are asking that the reign of God be made perfect in the whole world as it is in heaven.  The reign of God we first made perfect in the body and person of Jesus when He rose from the dead.  So for us to pray the Our Father we are asking that the new life, the new creation, the Kingdom of God grow and expand here on earth.  We are praying that we can be part of that work.


The real meaning of Easter is that God has completed creation which He began long ago.  God has brought His Kingdom into our midst, into our world, into our very lives, perfectly as a new way of living.  And the real meaning of Easter is that we now have work to do.  We now have to continue the Kingdom that was started when Jesus rose from the dead.


Easter is not just about "fixing what went wrong" on Good Friday. Easter is about God finally showing us the destiny of our world and how we are to participate in God's Kingdom.