Sunday, April 12, 1998

Easter's promise of faith

When you are a child, you hop up on Easter morning, and maybe you hunt for Easter eggs and maybe you find a basket of brightly wrapped candy. If you are lucky, the sun's shining and you can romp around outside without a coat. You notice that the flowers are blooming and that the birds are chirping. The dreariness of winter is gone. Everything has been reborn. It all seems very special.

If your parents are of the Christian faith, they may take you to a church where you hear someone talk about Jesus dying on a cross. You may not understand it, but you are possibly told that while this crucifixion was something very sad and awful, it was also something very wonderful. Jesus Christ, you are told, was the son of God and died because God loves us and was making the supreme sacrifice. The wonderful part is that Christ rose from the dead, ascended into heaven and saved us from our sins.

Later, as an adult, you may find you still do not wholly grasp this mystery. If you have maintained your beliefs, though, you will have found depths in the story that you had not even imagined as a child. You will have pondered how the living can somehow be dead simultaneously, how they can be estranged from any meaningfulness in their existence, how they desperately need reconciliation and renewal -- and how they can find it through the miracle of endlessly bestowed love that the cross paradoxically represents.

For Christians, Easter is indeed a special day, whether they are children or adults and whether the sun is shining or not. This day, more than any, sums up the faith they embrace and the extraordinary promises embodied in that faith. It is a day they revere because of the transforming truths they believe it symbolizes.