This coming Sunday, April 5, is Easter Sunday in our country.  In the stores we see “Easter Eggs” and baskets being displayed.  In the media we see Easter Sunday being promoted.  Indeed, one of our early family’s traditions was going to my  grandparent’s home on Easter Sunday.   We would let our children both hide and hunt their Easter eggs.  Today, we celebrate it as a broad cultural spring holiday. Culturally it is marked by family meals, candy, baskets, decorated eggs, egg hunts, flowers, and the Easter Bunny.

In our faith tradition, the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ is celebrated as the Lord’s Supper ( the Eucharist ) each Sunday.  Easter Sunday from a religious perspective was not a special day other than a great day to invite people to attend worship services.  Coming from a previous generation, you also tried to dress nicely for that day.   

As I paid closer attention, I realized that Easter does not mean the same thing to everyone. On television some of the familiar faces in the news had the ash of Lent on their foreheads. In the Catholic tradition, the season moves through Lent, Holy Week, Good Friday, and Easter. In many mainline churches, Easter is part of a larger liturgical season, while evangelicals often make it a major day of preaching, invitation, and celebration. In our own faith tradition, though, the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ were not reserved for one special religious day. They were remembered each Lord’s Day at the Table.

That difference made in observance made me curious. Growing up, I had been told it was simply the adoption of a pagan fertility rite. But the more I looked into it, the more complicated the story became. The annual Paschal observance—what we call Easter- seems to have arisen first in close connection with the Passover calendar and likely reflects strong Jewish-Christian influence. But by the second century it was not confined to Jewish churches, since churches in Asia Minor with many Gentile believers also kept a Christian Pascha in relation to 14 Nisan, while Rome and other Western churches kept it on Sunday. The Sunday observance was standardized by the Council of Nicaea in 325 as Easter Sunday.

Many of the customs now surrounding Easter—eggs, rabbits, spring imagery, and seasonal festivity—appear to have gathered around it over time from older folk and spring traditions. What you and I see today is a mixed picture: for some, a major religious feast; for many others, a cultural spring holiday. And in that cultural celebration, the resurrection of Christ—the event that changes everything—can easily fade from view.

Sharing the good news of the gospel was the clarion cry of Christians in the New Testament. It was punctuated by their good deeds and way of life.  It seems earlier this was already being converted to a single celebration day  as early as 325  by the Council of Nicaea.  Christianity began as a fellowship, moved to Greece and became a philosophy, moved to Rome and became an institution, moved to Europe and became a culture, and came to America and became an enterprise.

In my day we shared the gospel through Home Bible Studies, two weeklong gospel meetings, and large city-wide campaigns.  Gospel meetings and city-wide campaigns are no longer effective or used.  Our culture is reluctant to having actual guests in their homes for meals.  This was usually a precursor to friends being interested in the gospel story.   I find most congregations today are centered on “the building” with its associated events and requirements. The large overhead, large staff, ministries that serve the members, and outreach delegated to the “mission” committee obscure its true mission

Substitution with a one-day celebration nor having a building-focused meeting place  to serve existing members will not do.  What will?