Easter, Sacred And Secular

EASTER SUNDAY, APR. 12, 1998, 3:22 PM
WARREN ST., CHARLESTON

It is mid-afternoon of the Sunday called Easter, and you desire a closure of the most mystical of Christian celebrations. (Pentecost, My day, is actually more mystical, but it is not often celebrated… or even observed.) The worship service of which you were a part was liturgical and non-spectacular, but was complete in the conclusion of this death of which I spoke on Friday. Hallelujah! He is risen! Was the concluding shout… and, once again, the story is told that the Plan was “successful”.

What does “successful” mean? It was not evident to those at the cross or those who hurriedly prepared My Body, the dead Jesus, for burial and placed Me in the tomb. Was I aware of all of this? Yes, indeed, for while My Body was non-functional (and, therefore, dead) My Spirit, and My Spirit Body, was fully aware of the whole experience. With bodily death came the end of pain and suffering and, in a sense, the failure of My ostensible mission to the earth. Yet with bodily death also came the full realization of the Plan, that I had died for the sins of humankind, and that I was now truly free to be the Messiah – to all humans, potentially, rather than just to the Jews.

I knew that for some time those who still believed in Me would be considered as just a Jewish sect, and yet I also knew that the Jews, as a people, would hold to their Old Testament heritage, and that those who followed Me on, would be known as Christians, who would become a greater force for Me and My Way than the Jews ever could. I, as the Triune God, am pleased that Christians today are of every race, on every continent, and are the strongest force for spiritual good now in this earth.

Its very exclusiveness, in some portions of the Body (for this diverse Church can rightly be called My Body), serve to make it more fully inclusive. Thus, what I tried to do, in My short earthly ministry… to speak to Jews and Gentiles both… has burgeoned as an inclusive family of faith, including a few Jews.

The other part of My title illustrates another facet of both/and. After 3 worship services in that large Cathedral, with repeated assertions about and recollections of the sacred Easter story, some of that congregation reassembled on the lawn, and the children hunted and filled baskets with “Easter eggs”. There were also two small rabbits present, as another symbol of the secular “celebration” – eggs, full of candy or colored with dye, that “somehow” were “delivered” by the Easter bunny.

You realize that this is the secular celebration of the advent of the Spring season, when new growth heralds another beautiful and productive season. Eggs represent the potential for growth, as well as a food helpful to human growth (with some reservations about cholesterol). How rabbits came to be presented as the layers of eggs is certainly mystical, but the most obvious reason to see this as a truly mystical season is that the most significant Christian event (and probably the most spectacular of all religions and spiritual stories), the resurrection of Me, as the crucified Lord… and the Easter bunny who brings eggs, many of candy, are intertwined in this Spring holiday event. The sacred and the secular come together, even in consecutive hours in and around this great Episcopal Cathedral. I always have to smile at this curious juxtaposition!