Saturday, March 29, 1997

Beware the Easter bunny

Ah, Easter is upon us. Pastel colors, fluffy Easter bunnies, Easteregg hunts, children in new outfits - what a glorious time.

Except that none of these things have much to do with the biblical event of Jesus' resurrection. Around Christmastime we hear lots of messages decrying the commercialization of the holiday and calls to put the Christ back in Christmas. An organization has been formed to show Christians how to celebrate and alternative Christmas - one that focuses on the true meaning of the holiday.

But I hear precious few calls to end the commercialization of Easter. A few people will comment on the Easter bunny, but Easter egg hunts go on unabated in most places. We sort of assume most people understand the true meaning of Easter, and we're comfortable with the seemingly innocuous little traditions that have grown up around the holiday.

And this is the church's greatest problem - that it has grown comfortable in the world. Not much stigma is applied to being a Christian in our society. We don't have to hide in fear like the disciples did the day after the Crucifixion. We don't have to worry about imprisonment or death the way the first century disciples did.

Our biggest worries are how we're going convince the members to pay the bills and how we're going to fill our buildings so we can appear to be successes to our peers and denominational officials. We worry less that someone will break down our doors and haul us off to martydom than we do that someone will break down one of our cherished theological distinctions and haul us off to semi-liberalism.

We don't face deprivation for our faith. We have nice, comfortable lives, working in nice, comfortable jobs so we can support nice, comfortable families and try to stave off uncomfortable neuroses.

We buy nice, comfortable houses and nice, comfortable cars that we take on nice, comfortable vacations. We prefer our churches to have nice, comfortable pews and that our preachers deliver nice, comfortable sermons.

And if for some reason our lives aren't quite as nice and comfortable as we hoped, then at least our families will likely sacrifice to provide us with a nice, comfortable casket at our nice, comfortable funeral.

And we will have totally missed the fact that Easter - resurrection - was the culmination of a life of sacrifice that ended in a horrible death. We will have missed the point that the resurrection did not end sacrifice and death for Jesus' followers but was instead the fuel that powered an uncomfortable, sacrificial, death-defying faith.

Beware the Easter bunny, my friends. He may be cute and comfortable,but he has nothing to do with the Christian faith. Instead pray with Paul that we might know Christ and the power of his resurrection - power to lift us from comfort to real life.

Michael O'Connor is Online Editor for the Abilene Reporter-News and is an ordained United Methodist minister. He can be reaced by e-mail at religion(at)abinews.com.