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Holy Week is arguably the most hectic time in the life of any Christian congregation.  Additional services and ministry opportunities culminate on the Day of Easter, the annual celebration of “Christ alive.”  Plans and programs have been working up to this for months.  Extra flowers, extra musicians, and extra chairs are all organized in anticipation of the “biggest Sunday of the year.”   So has the Church, from generation to generation, learned to celebrate the Resurrection.  And when Easter is “over,” there’s usually a collective sense of accomplishment: “We pulled it off—one more time!” 


But when IS Easter “over?”

The secular world has its own answer.  Easter is “just another special day.”  And when it is over, merchants quickly convert display space for more Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and graduation goo-gaas.  Egg dye and stuffed animals are marked down for quick clearance.  Even our church buildings will be some of the most desolate and debris ridden places imaginable immediately following the Easter Day festivities.  Unclaimed lilies will stand lonely on the chancel steps and discarded worship guides will be stuffed into places only visitors seem to be able to find.  Ministers will take mini vacations and their office staff will be glad to see them go(!).  And the focus of even the most faithful Easter celebrants will quickly shift from the Resurrection of God’s Son to preparation for proms and summer jobs, organizing vacations, and car pools to Little League.  But that’s the point.  The reality of the Resurrection has very little to do with the fanfare, flora, and festivity that mark the communal “Hooray!” of Easter Day, and everything to do with what happens next.

Jesus’ resurrection was anything but “just another special day” in God’s unfolding drama.  The disciples didn’t start the week after Christ’s Crucifixion by sending his grave clothes to the cleaners only to stash them away for next year’s re-enactment.  The Resurrection changed everything.  It still does. 

And because Easter is ongoing, it becomes the wonderful privilege of the followers of the living Christ to live and behave in ways that are dramatically and demonstrably changed.  A century ago, the United Presbyterian Church in North America codified this Christ-honoring lifestyle for Presbyterians by identifying six “Great Ends of the Church,” the highest purposes of Jesus’ followers.  Throughout the first months of 2010, we are revisiting these, one at a time, in an effort to remember our core mission and realign our corporate and individual priorities accordingly.

It is both interesting and important that the second “Great End,” following immediately on the heels of the “Proclamation of the Gospel for the Salvation of Humankind,” is the expectation that we who have heard and received the Good News will become increasingly preoccupied with the “shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God.”  In other words, while it is of first importance that we celebrate the living Christ, knowing and proclaiming our unique faith in our one-and-only Savior, the expression of that faith and the result of that proclamation is presumed to be a dynamic shift in our human behavior; no longer asking “what’s in it for us,” but rather, “how can we live for others?” But while this is the logical, most fulfilling, appropriate, ultimate, expression of our faith, it is anything but natural.  Fulfilling the second “Great End” is something that most of Jesus’ followers struggle with most of our lives.  It takes a leap of faith to accept the Resurrection.  It takes a dramatic change in behavior to put the needs of others first in our life.

This kind of behavior modification seems both optimistic and counterintuitive at any time, but downright Pollyanna when investments are down and unemployment is up.  Common sense dictates that when times are hard we should be even more prudent in our living, measured in our generosity, and focused on our own long-term viability.  Simple common sense tells us that if there has ever been a time to watch out for ourselves first and others later, it is now.  But the Resurrection is the epitome of foolishness to the “common wisdom” of this world, as is every other component of God’s pattern of self-giving.  His is the extravagant generosity that gives us salvation and asks only that we respond in kind. 

It is, of course, the Resurrection of Jesus, God’s triumph over death itself, that is our point of entry into both the proclamation and the population of our faith.  No god of human imagination would ever think of making this ultimate and atoning sacrifice for the salvation of his people and the redeeming of his creation.  As a result, no other faith system is based on such an understanding of undeserved love and forgiveness.  But this is the heart of our faith as Jesus’ followers; the faith we proclaim, quite literally for the salvation of humankind.  It is an utterly unique faith, a complete and total inversion of every other system of beliefs. 

No one in Jesus’ day expected a resurrection, at least not the way Jesus did it.  Mary, Thomas, and Peter each experienced the living Christ in their own way according to their own deepest needs.  But a common response among all Jesus’ followers, whether they encountered him in Jerusalem or Emmaus, in the burial garden or on the seashore,, was overwhelming, out-reaching joy.  No one, meeting Christ alive, said, “Wow! that was kickin’ awesome” and went on with their normal day.  They would not/could not go back to old habits, old routines, old patterns of living.  They had seen the greatest promise of God fulfilled.  They knew creation itself had changed forever, and their only question was, “Where do you need me, Lord?”

No one in our day expects resurrection either, including many of the people who claim some modest part in the “Jesus story.”  Increasingly few church attendees understand, let alone anticipate, active participation in a resurrection faith or a resurrection community.  So, Easter becomes “just another special day.”  And without the anticipation or experience of a changed life or a changed reality, the trappings of Easter, like cool clothes and great chocolate, obliterate the power, promise, and place of the Good News in many contemporary minds and hearts. 

No amount of air expended through the bellows of the organ or the lungs of the preacher will change this.  What we are lacking is the compelling evidence of Resurrection faith; Resurrection living.  That is the genius of this second “Great End.”  Even the greatest act of proclamation, without a tangible response, dissipates in the lily-scented air of Easter Day.  “Faith without works is dead.”  And the “works” called for by Scripture are far more than “random acts of kindness” when we discover a temporary backlog of personal good will or a few extra dollars at the end of the month.  The second “Great End” echoes the call repeated throughout the New Testament to radical, sacrificial self-giving, by the followers of Jesus; investing ourselves outrageously in the shelter of those who are vulnerable, isolated, marginalized, abused, neglected, or alone, the nurture of those who are seeking, and the conscious deepening of the spiritual fellowship that results.  And while this may begin and remain a hallmark of the community of Jesus’ followers we call “church,” Scripture quickly pushes us deep into the world.  These are not actions by the Church for the Church alone.  This is, as Scripture consistently reminds us, our mission to all God’s people.  After all, who is our neighbor?

As with so much of gospel-shaped living, we see examples of the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God much more clearly in places where self-sufficiency is a foreign concept.  During the SARS epidemic in the first years of this century, patients suffering with that virus were admitted to isolation floors in many Asian hospitals, and in some regions, it was reported that the medical staff refused to service those floors.  It was the followers of Jesus who quietly left their homes, moving into the isolation wings with the SARS patients, risking their own health to provide care, comfort, and companionship to the suffering.  Documents from the early centuries of the Church recount similar behavior among the followers of Jesus.  Other examples abound: an elderly woman walks her young neighbor children to and from their inner city school to protect them from the neighborhood gangs; a middle-aged family mortgages their farm to help keep their neighbors out of foreclosure; a suburban professional spends his limited free time tutoring and mentoring struggling students in a depressed urban school.  These are only a few examples of Resurrection living. 

The second “Great End” of the church cautions not to celebrate Easter backwards.  Easter Day may be a calendar event, but the reality of the Resurrection never ends.  If anything, Easter begins at 12:01pm, when the bells have rung, the brass players are pooped, the benediction has been pronounced, and the doors of the church stand open, like the entrance to the empty tomb, having releasing God’s resurrection people, the provisional Body of Christ, into the service of God’s waiting world.