Sunday Matters #51: It’s Easter!
This week, we skip ahead to Sunday #51 in our book Sunday Matters because it’s EASTER!
Christmas and Easter are by far the biggest Sundays of the year for most believers. Even for many non-believers who don’t regularly attend a church, there is still somewhat of a thought that if they were to attend, it would be one of those two Sundays. We affectionately refer to them as the “Chreasters”. But as we approach another Easter, it can be easy for those of us who attend and serve regularly to have a similar approach to the “Chreaster crowd”. We can either treat Easter as another nostalgic tradition or relegate it to an insignificant Sunday that we’re just expected to attend.
However, Paul Tripp’s chapter rightly emphasizes that Easter is due for celebration.
One of the most significant and essential contributions of regular corporate worship is to put before us over and over again that we gather to worship and learn from a risen, victorious, and reigning Savior and to help us understand the implications of his moment of ultimate victory for everything in our lives. (pg. 250)
This Easter, let’s renew our understanding of the resurrection and what those implications are for us as we gather. We felt the brokenness of the world, our lives, and our sin as we worshiped together last night in our journey to the cross with Jesus on Good Friday.
So here on Saturday, I encourage you to pause and reflect. How have you felt the curse of sin this year? How have you experienced hurt, pain, loss, anger, frustration, and just plain difficulty recently? In what ways have you felt your own failures that have kept you from a sweet communion with Jesus and others? Where have you experienced death around you in those you love either relationally or literally? These are the thorns that came because of the curse of sin! As deeply as we feel the the thorns of the curse, we should remember that Jesus wore a crown of thorns as he hung on the cross and he died in order to absorb the full expression of the curse in our place. But tomorrow we celebrate this: unless Jesus rose from the grave, he would not have fully defeated death. This is simple, yet profound to say…..BUT, HE DID!
I want to encourage you this Easter to truly celebrate without reservation! This celebration takes mediation on the brokenness first, so that you can bring all of it to the risen Savior next. THIS is the rhythm of worship on Easter, but it is also the rhythm of worship every Sunday too. So, is Easter really a “big” Sunday? My answer is usually “yes and no”. “Yes”, because we put a particular emphasis (and rightly so) on Resurrection Sunday. But “no”, because this is also the regular gospel rhythm that we need to be forming our hearts every single week.
For as in Adam all die,
so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” (I Cor. 15:22)
So let’s celebrate tomorrow with all of our hearts. But let’s also let the rhythm of worship form our hearts beyond this Sunday to the next Sunday and the next Sunday after that too!
Let’s pray this way for our Easter Sunday gathering:
God help us to know and feel deeply the significance of your resurrection together. Awaken our hearts to celebrate without reservation. Form our hearts as we worship you today to live with hope for tomorrow. Amen.
