THEOLOGICAL COMMENTARY – by Rev. Nicholas Sykes

 

THE NEW CREATION

 

Both in the world in general and in the Church in particular Easter is perceived to be a time of joyful celebration.  For the world perhaps it’s like a smaller version of Christmas and a few distinctive touches like Easter chocolate eggs.  As a child I looked forward to my Easter egg on the breakfast table on Easter Sunday, and in the eastern world the egg retains more of its Easter symbolism of the egg or the tomb being cracked open by the new life springing from it.  The general life-bearing fruitfulness of springtime after the deadness of winter perhaps also retains for some a Resurrection symbolism.

 

The Church looks on Easter Day as defining all Sundays, so that every first day of the week is a sort of Easter day.  Sunday is always a day of celebration, a resurrection-day, inserted as a special occasion in our regular lives, so that by its influence all of our lives might be touched and infused by it, making them special through and through.

 

Easter is such a special time because of its witness to the successful accomplishment of the Lord Jesus’ atoning work.  Those of us who have followed the events of Holy Week from the Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem through the whole drama of the rejection of Jesus by the authorities, His betrayal by a false disciple and His denial by His own friend, His trial in a series of shameful parodies of true justice and finally His agony of body and spirit on the cross as He who was without sin became sin for us, have had at second hand some insight into the costliness of Jesus’ accomplishment.  Holy Week is the way that the Church helps us to gain personal insight into that cost, and for those of us who do, there is some emotional cost to bear as well.  Holy Week is not supposed to be an easy week; if it is we will probably have no yardstick by which to measure Jesus’ accomplishment.  And if that is the case our Easter celebration will be shallow.  But having insight into the costliness of His accomplishment gives depth and reality to our gratitude for it.  We truly have much to celebrate – indeed we have everything to celebrate.  The work was accomplished and the King of Kings was finally vindicated.  As Jesus offered Himself for us, He extended to us a new covenant by which our very hearts, that is to say our wills and intentions, have God’s law written upon them, and by which too our sins and rebellions are forgiven.

 

The apostolic witnesses to the risen Christ, for example the chosen witnesses who ate and drank with Him after He rose from the dead, witness still to us down the centuries that the way of the cross that the Lord trod was the triumphant way.  And if we too take up our cross and follow Christ, as He directs us, we too will assuredly know His triumph within us if we persist.  Easter Day, then, is the declaration of God’s triumphs over the powers of darkness, for the love of His children.

 

All this, of course, and more, is what we see now, looking back on the first Easter with the benefit of the New Testament witness.  It might come as something of a surprise to remember that on the first Easter day there was no New Testament yet.  If there was the beginning of a glimmer of understanding on the part of some about the significance of the strange things they were witnessing, that is the most that can be said.  The women saw the empty tomb, and Peter and John saw the empty tomb, and St John witnesses that he alone “believed” when he saw it.  We are not told what the terms of his belief at that point were, but we can surmise that he had begun to believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead.  But most of the disciples never believed the first witnesses.  There was confusion and questioning.  In fact the victory that we rightly associate with the Easter season seems not to have become fully clear until a forty day period had passed.  During this period there were many witnesses to the reality of Christ’s resurrection. Finally when the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples and associates gathered in prayer in Jerusalem, they were confirmed in the knowledge that Christ the King had conquered, as Peter preached.  They had come a long way from the uncertainty  of those first Easter Day witnesses.

 

Let us celebrate Easter then, with the happiness of deep joy at the King of King’s true accomplishment for the sake of us, His children that he loved.  Let our celebration be deep, not shallow: what depths of love there are in the heart of God for us that such a victory was won for us, so freely and yet at such cost!  Praise be to Him by men and by the heavenly host!  Amen.

 

For commentary, information and devotional material see www.churchofenglandcayman.com and www.anglicansatprayer.org