This day is the celebration of the Christian year. It was probably the first Christian feast; and it was celebrated every Sunday, the day of resurrection, as Christians gathered to read the Scriptures, share God’s Word and participate in the meal of thanksgiving.
In Christian time, Sunday is both the first day of creation and the 8th day of creation—the day of re-creation in Christ. On this day we celebrate all that God has done for us in creation, redemption and sanctification. And on Easter Sunday, we are reminded that all this is revealed to us in Jesus and that our reconciliation with God is accomplished through Jesus.
Janet Morley suggests that the “announcement of the defeat of death by life is strangely problematic for many of us” particularly in western cultures to understand and to celebrate. “We expect Easter to provide an uncomplicated and uncostly source of joy, and are puzzled when it does not… By contrast, it is those who have literally endured the cost and the risk of Passiontide, who are the readiest to hear the message of resurrection and claim it as truth.” For Morley, Easter “points us most vividly the distance that lies between those who have or who have not, as individuals or communities, explicitly confronted the powers of evil, and moved beyond the fear of death to a place of inexplicable freedom and life” (from Bread of Tomorrow, SPCK, 1992, pp. 119-120).
Life goes beyond death,
because life is called to life, not death.
That is the plan of its creator.
But life blossoms into full flower
only in those who nurture life
here on this earth;
in those who defend its rights,
protect its dignity,
and are even willing to accept death
in their witness to it.
(From Way of the Cross—Way of Justice by Leonardo Boff, Orbis, 1998; Reproduced in Bread of Tomorrow ed. by Janet Morley, SPCK, 1992, p. 132).
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