Alleluia. Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
With
those words Christian churches across the English-speaking world began or ended
their services yesterday. But let me let you into a secret… There are many
pastors, priests and preachers who, by the end of the last service yesterday,
were secretly thinking Alleluia! It is over…
Because
whilst Holy Week and Easter is THE most important week of the Christian
calendar, it can end up like the spiritual equivalent of a decathlon… with
services throughout the week, prayer meetings, home communions, extended vigils
on Good Friday and early morning services yesterday, often followed by
baptisms, communions and/or special Easter celebration services… Some of my
friends think that Holy Week is the only week of the year I do a full week’s
work…
But many
ministers down tools on Easter Monday for a few days, and frequently take the Sunday
after Easter off. That Sunday has traditionally been called “Low Sunday” and
although the origin of that term is uncertain, it is often marked by low
attendances at church services, so it is clearly not just the minister taking a
Sunday off!
Yet
for all that, I found myself, on Easter Monday, getting up at stupid o’clock to do
Thought for the Day on BBC Radio Ulster (and for the second time in a year they didn't tell me that the programme started an hour later than usual, meaning that I had actually got up even earlier than I needed to!) and heading from there to do a chaplaincy round at the
hospital… There is no virtue in that on my part, as I was simply deferring the
start of my few days off until this afternoon…
However,
the former Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, argues that this practice of taking
time off immediately after Easter devalues its significance as a Christian
festival… He suggests that the importance of Christ’s resurrection and the
message of hope within it is more than a one-day wonder… It completely changed
the disciples from a bunch of frightened fishermen and family members huddled
in a locked attic room, fearful that they would go the same way as Jesus… into
people who were prepared to preach about Jesus on the doorsteps of those who
had killed him… It has turned the entire world upside down… Without the
resurrection, Good Friday would be anything but good, Jesus’ birth in a
Bethlehem byre would have been long forgotten and the entire calendar would
have been dated differently… Not only that, but the many things that have
happened in his name over the past 2000 years, good and not so good, might
never have occurred…
It
is great to join in the celebrations of Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday…
but the question is, what difference does it make to your life and mine on
Easter Monday, and later on, when the chocolate eggs are all eaten and the
strains of Thine be the glory have faded away?
Christ
is STILL risen. He is risen indeed… Alleluia.
Selah
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