Bursting Forth in Glorious Day!

I have to admit, I spent the first fifteen years of my life nearly indifferent to Easter. Compared to Christmas, how could a feastless, presentless holiday like Easter really compete? Even more obvious than that, a holiday celebrating a birth is a whole lot more fun than a holiday about a death. Then again, maybe I had forgotten that Easter wasn’t really about a death... or may I didn’t fully understand the death behind it.

Good Friday music probably started the process. One year my youth group did a human video to Ray Boltz’s song “Watch the Lamb.” In spite of the giggles and jokes that interrupted our practices (visions of a lamb dragging two little boys through the streets of Jerusalem), I was shaken during the performance by that beauty in God’s sacrifice which reached perfection in the ugliness of sorrow.

After I realized the ugliness and the beauty of Good Friday, I could more fully appreciate the “bursting forth in glorious day” of Easter. That line is from a rich modern-day hymn called “In Christ Alone,” and to hear the shouts and cheers during this line on the radio or in church can make any day glorious, Easter or not. Only after I understood that victory was my soul able to heartily thrill at the sounds of “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” and “Up from the Grave He Arose.”

I also had to ask myself the eternal Easter question: Why did Jesus have to die? More often than not, I wind up trying to use the “deep magic” of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia to explain it: all who have chosen to join in the rebellion against the King of kings are consigned to a traitor’s death without a Hero to rescue them, the King Himself.

What we so often do not understand is that it is not Satan that demands this satisfaction, but God the Father, who is so pure and just that to ignore our sin would be going against His very nature. His unfathomable justice and mercy were both satisfied in the deal He proposed: “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” That is from 2 Corinthians 5:21, and is just one of many verses that explains the exchange that took place. We, who are nothing special in ourselves, are poor sacrifices either way--whether we are taken to be eternally punished for our own sin or we humbly give ourselves to our Lord in gratitude. This is why the Father’s substitution was effective, because His blameless Son soaked up every sin that had been or would be committed throughout earthly history and in turn imparted His righteousness to those humans who hear His call. In this way, God’s wrath against sin is perfectly satisfied, and He accepts us as His own children with His Son’s righteousness!

This year, I must confess that Christmas only increased my anticipation of celebrating Jesus’ sacrifice and victory, and my longing for His return. This year during Lent, I pray we would all be pierced by the meaning of Jesus’ death, and that the shout of victory we raise on Easter would be heard around the world by those who long for reconciliation.