reflections on easter

so today is easter. about the 1,981st one since humanity started celebrating it. i was thinking today about the holiday. over dinner the practice of communion came up. i live in a predominantly Anabaptist area, and communion takes place about once or twice a year around here. this is much different from my home church in Massachusetts, which was Baptist, that celebrated communion monthly. one person thought communion monthly was a good idea. another said she would like it weekly. someone else made the comment that weekly was to much. that it would become a ritual if we did it that much.

and that made me think.

I think we need to be reminded of the cross more, not less. If doing communion weekly would become a ritual, then we have completely missed Jesus. If our response to weekly communion is apathy, then our souls are what Jesus called the Pharisees "white washed tombs."

i look around at our world today, it seems that Christianity is getting significantly less tolerated than it used to be. more countries are becoming closed to the gospel, Islam is spreading like wildfire, and relativism is the God of the west. so when a holiday like Easter is still celebrated, it makes me think.

i was searching the web the other day and i came across a term i had never herd of before. New Atheism. Basically, it is a movement of atheism which encourages atheists not just to live with religion, but to actively oppose it. CNN described it as follows: "What the New Atheists share is a belief that religion should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises."

That is just scary. three of the four leading proponents of New Atheism are, you guessed it, Americans. Richard Dawkins, the lone Brit of the bunch, wrote a book a few years back entitled "the God Delusion." Our American rights will not be inalienable much longer.

it is just crazy to see the world just as the bible depicts it. Christians truly are foreigners here. The world system operates totally anti God.

so as today is easter, i was thinking that we, the Church, need to live louder lives. especially in the west. we can't be ashamed of what we believe. God has blessed us with an incredible freedom to meet in public, fellowship, and partake in celebrate of our risen Savior. we are not in danger of being sawn in half like many believers in communist and Muslim countries are today.

i was thinking about the words of Paul today. "If Christ has not been raised, then you are to be pitied more than all men." That is so true. I don't know if we realize it, but often times we live like that. I live like that. The church of the West lives as if the gospel is just a story to make us feel better about life. We live as if it isn't real. We live as if the words of the Bible are dead words that carry no meaning beyond bringing us temporary comfort. We live as if Jesus is still buried in a tomb somewhere in Jerusalem. But the verse doesn't end there.

"Christ has indeed been risen!" "Therefore my beloved brothers, be steadfast and immovable always abounding in the work of the Lord because you know your labor is not in vain."

It is not in vain because we do not serve a dead God. We serve a God who is very much alive. A God who is very much on the throne. And a God who more real than the world around you.

we need to wake up America. We are called to more than this. He deserves it.


JN