Easter is more than an annual event

For believers, Easter which we celebrated last Sunday, is more than an annual event. Since 2000 years ago, it became an ongoing experience, at communal and personal levels. This is the rationale behind preceding it with 40 days of Lent, proceeded with 40 days before Ascension.

 Easter faith is the rationale behind Sunday worship and every Mass (John 20:1, Acts 20:7). It is the rationale behind the singing of Halleluiah during Christian funerals, lauding God for his victory over death.

Death best summarises all the bad news we can ever get. “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die”, said God in Genesis 2:16–17. That is precisely what happened to Adam and Eve. Death became the fate of the entire human race!

The first form of death that occurred upon humanity was spiritual death. It was death from God’s fellowship, on the one hand, and a breakdown in the relationship between Adam and Eve, on the other.
The second form of death was physical, as evident from the first murder in Genesis 4:1-16. Scientists tell us that the seed of death is already in us from conception.

The third form of death was eternal, and that is our greatest tragedy! We are held in bondage to sin and death until a payment is made on our behalf to God.

Jesus came to terminate the death of all humanity, with the mystery of the resurrection. He has secured our justification, sanctification, and adoption, all the way to our glorification in heaven (Romans 4:25).

The physical miraculous event of the resurrection, certainly has much spiritual significance. The joy of believing in the physical resurrection is that we can believe in the spiritual meaning too.
Because risen life is far beyond our limited experience, we will have to walk by faith, not by sight in order to live it (2 Corinthians 5:7).

2000 years ago hundreds of witnesses reported seeing a man alive whom three days before they had seen being tortured to death. They thought it was an apparition or a ghost, but then they saw him eat fish and bread. They touched him and put their fingers in his wounds (Luke 24:39).

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is important as a testimony to the resurrection of human beings, which is a basic tenet of the Christian faith. Christianity possesses a Founder who transcends death and promises that His followers will do the same. If there were no reference to eternal life, Christianity would be reduced to ethics, a philosophy of life (1 Corinthians 15:17).
In the resurrection, Jesus Christ has opened our spiritual eyes to God’s merciful and everlasting love.

We are facilitated to worship God by offering the same sacrifice, as Jesus did and as he commanded us to do (Luke 22:19). We must repent and believe this good news. We must announce this good news in a society that lives as if God is dead; a society where the transitory is more regarded rather than the permanent; a society of rampant exploitation and consumerism.

Faith in the resurrection is essential. It helps us to make fruitful, the Word of Jesus Christ, sown in our hearts, through good works. This will facilitate the realisation of the new garden of God, or New Jerusalem, mentioned in Revelation 12-13. Halleluiah!

John Wynand Katende,
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