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How do you celebrate Easter?  In the latest edition of Faith Today senior editor Bill Fledderus confessed to a common Canadian experience.  In Canada we are often just emerging from the heaviness of winter when Easter arrives.  He writes, “I’ve been plodding along through months of daily challenges and distractions and chores and occasionally desperate prayers and – bam!  There’s my caring, haloed rabbi Jesus making the ultimate self-sacrifice for wobbly me?  For not just me, but the entire cosmos?  Woah.  It's awe-inspiring.  That’s the Spirit-unleashing pivot point of history right in front of me.”

Has Easter come in a surprising way this year?  Has it snuck up on you?  This can happen in more ways than one.  We can be so engrossed in the duties and distractions of our lives that it is hard to pump the brakes of our hearts and reflect about something of such eternal significance as Easter.  But there is an historical practice to deal with this.  Lent is a 40-day season of heart preparation leading up to the celebration of Easter.  Typically fasting is involved.  Christians are encouraged to follow the pattern in Scripture by setting aside meals to focus on prayer and reflection.  In the Eastern rite churches this season is described as a “bright sadness”.

This past Sunday we arrived at Palm Sunday.  This marks the final week of Lent.  It commemorates Christ’s victorious entrance into Jerusalem.  Yet by the end of that week, He would be crucified.  So many who had welcomed Him into Jerusalem with “hosanna!” changed their chant to “crucify Him!”  In many traditional churches this week is celebrated as Holy Week or Passion Week.  The Greek Orthodox Church refers to it as the “Great Week”.  There are often daily services during the seven days leading up to the commemoration of the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday and the Passion of Jesus on Good Friday. 

What is the best way to enter into Easter?  When Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, he reminded them that "Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed." (I Corinthians 5:7)  What we know as the week of Jesus death, burial, and resurrection was God’s fulfillment to centuries of anticipation.  The pageantry of the Passover celebration wonderfully looked forward to the coming of Jesus, the Lamb of God.  He would be the ultimate sin-bearing Saviour.  Nothing pictures God's heart more passionately than Jesus' sacrifice on Calvary.  God wrote His Word Incarnate in bold, crimson words on that rough wooden banner for all to read: "I Love You".

This Easter, be sure to “keep the feast” as Paul reminds us.  Take time to take stock of your relationship with Jesus.  At Cornerstone we have been called to prayer.  Come on Saturday, April 19 for one of the hours of prayer at the church.  This Easter, embrace the cross!  Hold it close and let its meaning change you forever.  One way to do this is to start reading in John 12.  You will see Jesus’ anointing, which anticipated His suffering and death.  Then, you will read about the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.  The next chapter chronicles Christ’s humble service of foot washing and telling His disciples this He would soon make the ultimate self-less act.  John 14, 15, and 16 is an amazing pledge of comfort and care in light of Jesus’ coming death.  Of course, we see Jesus praying passionately for us in John 17.

At John 18 the record turns our attention to the arrest and trial of Jesus.  We dare not skip over John 19 which documents His sentencing, suffering, painful death and burial.  But three days later, John 20 tells us, everything changed in a glorious fashion – Jesus is alive!  Ask the Holy Spirit to help you ponder anew His words of hope as our eyes are directed to victory of Jesus’ resurrection.  You may have missed out on the practice of Lent.  Passion Week may be well under way.  But you can still give joyful thanks for the Gospel.  Easter is about Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection that transforms every day of every week of every year…He is indeed our Passover…let’s celebrate Him!