“Easter is about the wild delight of God’s creative power–not very Anglican perhaps, but at least we ought to shout Alleluias instead of murmuring them; we should light every candle in the building instead of only some; we should give every man, woman, child, cat, dog, and mouse in the place a candle to hold; we should have a real bonfire; and we should splash water about as we renew our baptismal vows. Every step back form that is a step toward an etherial or esoteric Easter experience, and the thing about Easter is that it is neither ethereal nor esoteric. It’s about the real Jesus coming out of the real tomb and getting God’s real new creation underway...[Easter week] ought to be an eight-day festival, with champagne served after morning prayer, or even before, with lots of alleluias and extra hymns and spectacular anthems. Is it any wonder people find it hard to believe in the resurrection of Jesus if we don’t throw our hats in the air? Is it any wonder we find it hard to live the resurrection of we don’t do it exuberantly in our liturgies? Is it any wonder the world doesn’t take much notice if Easter is celebrated as simply the one-day happy ending tacked on to forty days of fasting an gloom? …if Lent is a time to give things up, Easter ought to be a time to take things up. Champagne for breakfast again–well, of course. Christian holiness was never meant to be merely negative. Of course you have to weed the garden from time to time; sometimes the found ivy may need serious digging before you can get it out. That’s Lent for you. But you don’tsimply want to turn the garden back into aneat bed of blank earth. Easter is the time to sow new seeds and to plant out a few cuttings. If Calvary means putting to death things in your life that need killing off if you are to flourish as a Christian and as a truly human being, then Easter should mean planting, watering, and training up things in your life (personal and corporate) that ought to be blossoming, filling the garden with color and perfume, and in due course bearing fruit. The forty days of the Easter season, until the ascension, ought to be a time to balance out Lent by taking something up, some new task or venture, something wholesome and fruitful and outgoing and self-giving.” –N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope
This morning I read this… and wondered how I can live it. Ideas?
Stephanie Ebert 