Monday in Easter Week

I Corinthians 15:1-11

 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received...

Today, the world and for that matter most of evangelical Christianity put Easter away.  Christmas usually lingers at least until New Year's, but Easter disappears almost immediately. 

Now, from the world's perspective this is not any surprise.  I mean a holiday which is about nothing more than bunnies, chocolate and hunting eggs surely doesn't deserve more than a day's worth of celebration.  Yet it is truly shocking how little attention Christians, at least in this country devote to the celebration of the resurrection.  Really, most of us didn't even give all day yesterday to that.  We go to church, give a good two hours to Jesus and then embark on the celebration of bunnies, and chocolate and hunting for eggs.  For those of us who observed anything of Lent it must be a terrible let down that we prepared for forty days for that.  Was that few hours of celebration really worth forty days of fasting and examination?   Was the resurrection our Lord really worthily celebrated in just a few hours?  I should think not!

What most of us miss is that Easter in the church is not confined to one Sunday morning but it is a festival that lasts 50 days!  We should have fifty days of feasting, of joyful celebration, of greeting each other with "Christ is Risen!", of shouting "Alleluia!" because the what we are celebrating can bearly be contained to 50 days or 50 lifetimes, let alone one morning. 

It is the thing of first importance, the pivotal and more significant event in all the existence of existence.

 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.

It is the ground and foundation of our Christian faith and of our entire lives as Christians. 
Christ died for our sins, really died.  It didn't just appear that he was dead, it wasn't someone else dying for him, it wasn't someone else crucified by mistake, neither was he just some man who died.  (All things, by the way, the world and the devil would like us to believe). Christ Jesus, Son of God, died for our sins in all his humanity and divinity, and he was buried.  Christ also on the third day, rose again, just as the Scriptures had foretold.  He didn't just appear to rise, he didn't spiritually rise, he didn't just rise the hearts of his followers, he didn't rise as an idea or a morality or a an ethic or a movement.   (All things, by the way, the world and the devil would like us to believe).  Christ Jesus rose in a new, but very real, very human, very material body and he appeared to multiple witnesses.  So many witnesses in fact, that if Jesus didn't scare the world so much, they would have to accept his resurrection as an indisputable fact (just as they would with any other event witnessed by so many.)

That would be enough to celebrate for fifty days, but there is so much more...