Your Easter Questions... Answered!

Here are a summary of the questions posed by people from our community this past Sunday.  Hope you enjoy processing them as much as we did!

Why do we participate in Lent, a man-made season, and not Passover, a God-made season?
It’s true that Lent is a man-made season that was first begun around the fourth century as a way for the community of faith to identify with the new believers as they were going through their season of preparation for their baptisms into the faith on Easter Sunday (see this article for good background material on Lent: http://www.cresourcei.org/cylent.html). Passover was established by God as a way for the people of Israel to commemorate the Exodus from Egypt.  The reason we celebrate Lent and not traditional Passover is because we are a part of the Western Church who believed that Christ’s coming to our world was the fulfillment of Passover, and therefore represents our true deliverance not just from a physical Egypt, but from all of the “Egypts” of our lives. 

Why do we celebrate Easter? What is the real meaning of Easter? When did they first start celebrating Easter or start the services we know?
Easter is the day we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus.  In the life of the early church, they began meeting together and celebrating the resurrection on a weekly basis (see Acts 20:7) as a way of routinely praising God for that great day.  So their gatherings on the first day of the week were regular celebrations of the resurrection (which is why the Sundays are not counted as “official days” in the season of Lent).  However, it was during the year 325 AD that Easter was established as an official day of celebration of the resurrection.  This article (http://www.cresourcei.org/cyeaster.html) has great information about all of this history.

Why the bunny?

The idea of an Easter Bunny was first mentioned in a book by Georg Franck von Frankenau in 1682.  It came from the tradition of an Easter Hare bringing Easter Eggs to children. However, the hare was a popular subject in medieval church art, and may have helped to contribute to the idea of a bunny being a symbol of good will and new life coming in the spring.

Why did God wait to raise Jesus? If He died on a Friday and was raised on a Sunday, that isn’t really 3 days, right?

I heard a comedian say one time that God waited to raise Jesus from the grave because if it had happened right away, no one would have believed that He was really dead, only sick.  That same comedian also said that He waited until Sunday so He could just show up in church because He knew that’s where everyone would be!  Of course, we know that neither one of those ideas hold much merit, but they do make us laugh! 
Jesus declared that he would be raised “on the third day,” not after 3 days (see Matthew 16:21 as one example).  There is wild speculation about why he waited, but most good theories are connected to two primary ideas:
1 - The number 3 in scripture has always been a symbol of completeness.  By waiting until the 3rd day, God is making a declaration about the work being perfectly complete.
2 - One of the unfortunate things that happened pretty regularly during that time was actually burying people alive.  Because they didn’t have very good advances in medicine, it wasn’t uncommon to bury someone before they were actually dead.  But once someone was in the grave three days, there was no chance that they may have actually survived.  Everyone would have known that Jesus really was dead and therefore in order for him to be alive, it had to be an act of God to bring him back to life.

Does the Saturday in between Good Friday and Easter Sunday have a name?
Yes.  It actually has two names: Silent Saturday, or Holy Saturday.  It is the time we believe Jesus was in hell (as it states in the Apostle’s Creed - see next question) and God was silent in His response to the crucifixion.

Why does Jesus say, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
The early church taught and believed (as does the modern church), that when Christ died he took the sins of the world on himself (see 2 Corinthians 5:14-21 as an example).   Since God and sin cannot exist together, that leads to an understanding that when Christ descended into hell (see above question) he was separated from God and therefore God’s presence left him.  Now that raises more questions, because we also believe that Jesus was fully God himself, so how could he leave himself?!?  This is a great question and actually highlights that two of the most difficult tenets of the faith for us to understand, are the Trinity (Father, Son & Holy Spirit - one God but three expressions) and the incarnation (Jesus being both fully God & fully Man all at the same time), both of which are at work in the death and resurrection of Christ.  Therefore, this is one of those times when we must actually live in the place of faith without full comprehension or understanding.  Very hard to do at times!

Thanks for asking all of these great questions!  Feel free to email back if more get generated from these answers.


On the journey with you,


Pastor Beau