Don’t Forget About Easter *Too* Soon
March has past us by and, this year, that means that Easter has come and gone as well. But while Easter Sunday may be just a memory brought to mind by the now drastically discounted chocolate bunnies and swiftly disappearing Cadbury Crème Eggs, the reality at which that day hinted still lingers. Thus, for centuries, the Church has recognized Easter not just as a single day which points back to a singular historical event (the first Easter) but as the beginning of a new season that mirrors the new era into which the first Easter ushered our world.
The Easter season, also called Eastertide by those with an antiquarian bent, is a time in which Christians focus on those painfully few weeks between the resurrection of Jesus and His subsequent ascension into heaven. For the first disciples this was no doubt a time of joy mixed with confusion: What exactly does the empty tomb imply? What are we to make of the fact that Jesus, a man we saw die, has appeared to us, even eaten with us? How does this change things—our faith, the way we see the world, our very lives? We might imagine that all of these questions buzzed through the minds of the Apostles between their fleeting encounters with the risen Jesus. And as such the Easter season is an opportunity for us to ask ourselves the very same questions: essentially, what does Easter mean for us?
For starters it means hope, confident hope. The Hebrew scriptures contain a number of brief and oblique references to some kind of life after death, even some kind of resurrection. But in the experiences of Jesus these glimmering sparks were fanned into full flame; the abstract and plausibly deniable promises of the prophets and others were represented and enacted in a physical example. And thus our hopes, as people living in the great Eastertide of history, that the grave need not conquer and that death need not be the end are nourished and strengthened.
Further, this season means clarity of purpose. Just as Jesus’ empty tomb confirms that life extends beyond death, indeed triumphs over death through Him, so that triumph stands arrayed like an invincible army against the despair and nihilistic dissolution that characterizes so many modern lives. Far from a trivial and absurd respite before “the inevitable”, life takes on a vastly more significant character. For if death is merely a temporary imposition prior to the beginning of a far fuller and longer-lasting existence then those elements of our life that insinuate their importance to our spirits—our relationships with God, our families, our duties, and so on—acquire a significance they would not otherwise have.