Thoughts on Easter

From a non-Christian's perspective, Easter must seem like an odd hodgepodge of a holiday.  There's the eggs, the Easter Bunny -- the season probably seems like just another reason to buy chocolates and indulge our kids.  For Christians, though, Easter is not the same as the pagan spring-time ritual or commercial "eggs"travaganza that is part of American culture.  Easter is the week after Passover this year, which reminds me of what the season is really about -- a resurrected Christ, who suffered and died after a Passover meal in which he served unleavened bread and wine and pronounced a "new covenant" with his believers.  This Last Supper looks forward toward communion as Christians practice it today, but it also looks back to the ancient Exodus story in which God passed over the first-born sons of the slaves in Egypt while killing the Egyptians' sons.  Jesus' resurrection is similarly complex -- it demonstrates Jesus' power over life and death and his ongoing, victorious relationship with God the Father.  While Christians do look back to the past for evidence of Jesus' resurrection on Easter, it is more a celebration of ongoing life and rebirth in a spiritual, not a physical, sense.  Easter means that Jesus is alive, and it is an ongoing relationship with him that makes a free, full life possible.