The Path To Easter
Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” -Matthew 16
The path to Easter
Easter is the first of April. Easter is the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection and ours. I love Easter and the promise of Glory it foreshadows. But the path to Easter goes right through the cross. Jesus tells us in these verses from Matthew that we must take up our cross to follow Christ. We must lose our lives if we hope to find them. This isn’t a call to physical death, but a call to dying to ourselves - our own concerns, desires, and obsessions - and a promise of life. Life lived fully in this time and a new, physical life in the one to come in glory.
The cross is the central symbol of the Christian faith. It isn’t an empty tomb or a butterfly to remind us of Easter, but a cross to remind us of the sacrifice on Good Friday that led to the Easter Day resurrection. While protestant churches generally have empty crosses to remind us to look to a risen Lord, we still have to look at the cross to get there. The cross reminds us to put everything beneath Jesus. During this season of Lent, many people fast from a food or beverage or an action to remind themselves that nothing is more important than God. And as a church, we strongly encourage our people to participate in the Good Friday services so we realize the cost to God of the new creation we celebrate on Easter.
In our modern culture we have lost a genuine understanding of God. We tend to perceive God as a genie or holy Santa Claus that exists for our pleasure and to fulfill our dreams. We make ourselves into a god, but Matthew and the cross remind us that a genuine God is greater than everything we commit our devotion to. Greater than ourselves and our aspirations. And we commit ourselves to Him for His glory, not ours. That’s hard… It’s taking up our cross… And it leads to Easter… to glory.
Pastor Tom