“It’s worse than Christmas” – I wonder how many clergy secretly think that about Easter? So many services concentrated into such a short space of time. May be you’ve thought it about the shops – no Santas or snowmen, but plenty of bunnies and oh-so-much chocolate! It’s as if we start to wish Easter away, we can’t wait until things “get back to normal”, but actually the joy of Easter is that after it things are never normal again because Easter is really so much better than Christmas.
If Jesus had only been born, then that would have been amazing, we could have seen God face to face and had some brilliant teaching and marvelled at some great miracles, but we would still be sinners, separated from God for all eternity and destined to pay the just and righteous penalty for our rebellion against the holy creator God – death.
But, as we are discovering over Easter at St. Andrew’s and St. Michael’s, Jesus’ death and resurrection changed all that. Because Jesus died in our place, for our sins and because God then raised him to new and eternal life we can now have real, solid, definite hope, we can enter into the throne room of heaven and know God personally. Isn’t that great?
So lighten up. We might have a few more sermons to prepare (or listen to), that roast lamb on Easter day might be a little tougher than we hoped and, yes, the shops are ripping us off as usual for a chocolate egg filled with air, but grab another hot cross bun and reflect for a moment on God’s amazing love for us – for you. That’s surely worth a little joy.
