[Greetings, friends, from Austin! And Happy Easter! As I sit here in reflection, I am reminded how Easter, like all great holidays, “belongs to an order of ideas which never really perished, and which is now less likely to perish than ever.”1 As I wrote of Christmas in On the Spirit of Christmas, Easter is “an annual invitation to travel backward in history and return into the warm heart of something much older than us. It is, in the words of Chesterton, a boomerang that comes bearing blessings.”
The return of old things in new time, by an established and automatic machinery, is the permanent security of men who like to be sane. The greatest of all blessings is the boomerang. And all the healthiest things we know are boomerangs—that is, they are things that return. Sleep is a boomerang. We fling it from us at morning, and it knocks us down again at night. Daylight is a boomerang. We see it at the end of the day disappearing in the distance; and at the beginning of the next day we see it come back and break the sky. I mean, we see it if we get up early enough—which I have done once or twice. The same sort of sensational sanity (truly to be called sensation because it braces and strengthens all the sensations) is given by the return of religious and social festivals. To have such an institution as [Easter] is, I will not say to make an accident inevitable, but I will say to make an adventure recurrent—and there, in one sense, to make an adventure everlasting.2
By returning our attention to the origins and spirit of Easter annually, we ensure the world stays “conscious of a particular truth”… we keep a fire alive that makes everlasting dawn possible. So, in this week’s essay, I revisit an essay I wrote around this time last year (On the Resurrection) but add some context on its origins and clarifications on my points. I hope you find it insightful!]
In 325, the First Council of Nicaea decided that Easter would fall on the first full moon following the vernal, or spring, equinox. The date isn’t totally arbitrary; the New Testament tells us that Jesus’ death happened around the Jewish feast of Passover (which the Jews celebrated on the 14th day of the first month… their calendar began at the new moon, so the 14th would be the day of the full moon). As Christianity spread worldwide, people started celebrating Easter on different dates. By the 4th century, there were at least four different methods for determining which date to celebrate the holiday. Seeking to establish a unified and universally recognized solution, the First Council of Nicaea picked the method we in the West still follow today.
As for the English name, Easter, it is derived from the Saxon spring festival, Ēostre—a festival named after the pagan goddess of springtime renewal that it celebrated3… a festival eventually replaced by the Christian Pascha (cognate of Hebrew Pesach, meaning Passover), which celebrated the resurrection of Christ as the new “Passover lamb” whose sacrifice and blood was the salvation of man, just as the lambs sacrificed by the Israelites in Egypt spared them from the tenth plague in Egypt—their blood marking where the Angel of Death should “pass over.”
At the center of this holiday is the center of Christianity—the story of Jesus’ resurrection told in the New Testament. Many have wrestled with this mystery through the years. Some take it entirely as truth; others, often with atheist sympathies, dismiss it as made up in imagination, and many fall somewhere in between. Even those among us who favor its truth continue to have unanswered and intellectually honest questions (which faith either dismisses or is dismissed by).
Perhaps, I sometimes catch myself wondering, Jesus was just a great spiritual master (like Socrates) but not actually the genetic offspring of God whose body was physically resurrected. But that thought must then contend with C.S. Lewis’s warning against accepting Jesus’s claim to be a great moral teacher while simultaneously rejecting his claim to be God:
That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with a man who says he is poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.4
I’m not here to try and convince you one way or the other or condemn you for having genuine questions about things I don’t, ultimately, know the answer to beyond a shadow of a doubt; I’m here to take you back to 1st-century Judea and argue that the story of Christ’s resurrection on Easter is worth contemplating regardless of whether you find yourself now capable of taking the full leap of faith.
The year is 33 A.D. Rome was the dominant power in the world. Appearing out of obscurity, a Jewish philosopher named Jesus started delivering sermons and performing the occasional miracle around the Mediterranean. As his fame increased, so did the threat he posed to the established Roman authorities, who eventually had him arrested. Brought before the Roman prefect of Judea, Pontius Pilate, on charges of blasphemy, Jesus was sentenced to death by crucifixion for (among other things) claiming to be King of the Jews.
In those days, putting someone to death for undermining the powers that be was not uncommon. Socrates. Seneca. Paul. Each shared the same death sentence for their so-called “dangerous” views. (Though a few things make Christ unique among these martyrs—one being the suffering that he had to endure on the way to his execution and the other, obviously, being what came after his death.)
This brings us to the death and resurrection, where the Christian story of Christ diverges from other non-Christian references to Jesus’s life (like that of the great Roman historian Tacitus).5
As told in the New Testament, after Pilate’s execution order, Christ is handed over to Roman soldiers who whip and torment Jesus before forcing him to carry the cross that will kill him to the spot where he’s nailed to it. Hanging between two convicted thieves, Jesus slumps for something like six hours under a sign that reads “INRI” or “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” There, he utters one of his most famous statements, extending amazing grace to those who persecuted him: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.” ”6 Shortly after this statement and a few other whispers, his spirit slips his flesh and life leaves his body. These are the moments remembered in churches across the world every Good Friday.
Taking him down from the cross, Jesus’ body was placed in a tomb with a massive boulder blocking its entrance. Three days later, a group of women discover the stone rolled away and the tomb empty—Christ, it is revealed to them, had risen from the dead.
No specifics about the resurrection are given in the New Testament; just several accounts of an empty tomb and post-resurrection appearances by Jesus. In these appearances, Jesus announces to his disciples the effect of his actions. He has conquered Death as prophesied, and “in His name repentance and forgiveness will be proclaimed to all nations…”7 In other words, by his blood, the bridge to Heaven broken by Adam’s sins was rebuilt. Because he suffered for their sins, salvation has been reclaimed. Hope has been restored to humanity. Life itself has been renewed and is constantly being renewed as the eternal seed continually brings new life.
For Christians, this moment means everything. Today, pastors across the country delivered their Easter Sunday sermons surrounding the story of Christ’s resurrection to their congregations. It is the story upon which the whole faith hinges.8 C.S. Lewis summarized its significance this way:
The New Testament writers speak as if Christ’s achievement in rising from the dead was the first event of its kind in the whole history of the universe. He is the ‘first fruits’, the ‘pioneer of life’. He has forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought, and beaten the King of Death. Everything is different because He has done so. This is the beginning of the New Creation: a new chapter in cosmic history has opened.9
But as fundamental as the resurrection story is for Christians, one can have questions about its truth (or doubt it entirely) and still find valuable insights in its message. Because what we see with the resurrection, ultimately, is a story of a man who willingly and selflessly embraced death in the ultimate act of love so that humanity might be redeemed.
At its core, the resurrection tells of a man who dies to save, like the mythical Phoenix—the creature that must burst into flames to retain vitality. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the Latin initials of the words carved into the cross, INRI, can become either “Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum” (“Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”) or Igne Natura Renovatur Integra (“In fire, all things renewed.”)10
Irrespective of what one thinks about the story’s literal truth, the command of Christ and Christianity in the resurrection story reveal a roadmap for our psychological development as individuals. To progress, we, like Christ, must be willing to sacrifice ourselves (or at least pieces of ourselves) inhibiting our ascension. We must release things that, and often people who, prevent us from reaching the heights we’re capable of. We must remain ready to deliver our worn-out ways to the flames, despite how wounding it will be or how much it will hurt. Per Crucem Ad Lucem. Through the cross to the light.
Because that is how we arise renewed. And that, by renewing ourselves, is how we renew the world. Such is the message that the spirit of Easter brings for both believers and unbelievers alike. Such is the message that we all would do well to meditate on more often.
Consider the beauty of rebirth and redemption. Bring the story of the resurrection to the center of your thought and allow its eternal perspective to rearrange your life. Dwell on how, regardless of what we’ve done in the past, renewal remains open and available to each of us at any moment.
But only if we’re willing to pay the cost. Only if we’re willing to let ourselves die so that we might be made new. Only if we follow in the footsteps of the One who defeated death. Only if we are willing to pick up our cross and follow Him.
Only if we’re willing to endure burning can we continue to give light.
Winter Fire: Christmas with G.K. Chesterton, written by Ryan Whitaker Smith (hereinafter, “Winter Fire”), p. 17.
Winter Fire, p. 55 (quoting G.K. Chesterton, The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, vol. 29, initially published in The Illustrated London News, 1913). I have swapped “Easter” in where Chesterton used Christmas. As the bookends of Jesus life, there are other bridges between Christmas and Easter, like the Christmas Tree, which could be seen as the Cross (the wood Christ was crucified on) or the Paradise Tree—the tree that unites Heaven and Hell. The lights represent the world’s illumination and the light’s reemergence. The angel at the top of the tree might be seen as symbolic of placing the divine at the top of our hierarchy of priorities in the season.
Other symbols of Easter, like the egg and the bunny, are a mixture of Christian and pagan. The Easter Bunny is a figure of folklore from Germany—the “Easter Hare” originally played the role of a judge, evaluating whether children were good or bad and giving (or withholding) gifts from its basket based on its findings, similar to Santa’s “naughty or nice.” The Easter Egg can be traced to early Christians, who adopted the egg—the ancient symbol for new life and rebirth—and began painting them red on Easter in honor of the blood of Christ.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p. 52.
Writing in The Annals ( 116 A.D.), Tacitus describes the persecution of the Christians by Nero and points out Pilate’s execution order in 15:44, but mentions nothing of the resurrection:
Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus.
Luke 23:34.
Luke 24:44.
See Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 15:14: “And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.”
C.S. Lewis, Miracles.
There is some speculation that this translation was used in certain occult circles to symbolize spiritual regeneration by the sacred fire of truth and love (which Jesus might be said to have embodied).