From Associate Pastor Tammy Rottschaefer:
March begins, and like the snow-shrouded ground forced to be introspective by nature regarding its coming growing season, we find ourselves in that every-year time of waiting for the resurrected life of Spring to burst forth. No wonder that through the ages the coming of the new-life season of spring and the celebration of Easter, marking Christ's resurrection, have been woven together.
Etymology Dictionary
Easter O.E. Eastre (Northumbrian Eostre), from P.Gmc. *Austron, a goddess of fertility and sunrise whose feast was celebrated at the spring equinox, from *austra-, from PIE *aus- "to shine" (especially of the dawn). Bede says Anglo-Saxon Christians adopted her name and many of the celebratory practices for their Mass of Christ's resurrection. Ultimately related to east. Almost all neighboring languages use a variant of L. Pasche to name this holiday.
resurrection c.1290, from Anglo-Fr. resurrectiun, O.Fr. resurrection, from L.L. resurrectionem (nom. resurrectio) "a rising again from the dead," from pp. stem of L. resurgere "rise again" (see resurgent). Replaced O.E. æriste. Originally a Church festival commemorating Christ's rising from the dead; generalized sense of "revival" is from 1649. Also used in M.E. of the rising again of the dead on the Last Day (c.1300).
In the weeks since our Sunday morning text was taken from John 3 (the nighttime conversation between two Rabbis, Nicodemus and Jesus), I have continued to be moved by this particular passage:
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 2He came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.' 3Jesus answered him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.' 4Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?' 5Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7Do not be astonished that I said to you, "You must be born from above."
--John 3:1-7
Perhaps it is the "season" of my own life, in which I find myself more attentive to the deaths and births of life. When I was younger, life seemed all about birth. Now I have just been to a memorial service celebrating the life of a dear friend who, just before diagnosis of his own life-taking illness, had recently spoken about the loss of so many friends to death; I daresay he had become more focused on the deaths of life. In my own middle years of a life's expected span, I find that I am keenly aware, and surrounded by, both birth and death.
As Jesus talks to Nicodemus, I hear him trying to help us understand that we all live our entire lives as Easter people, renewed over and over again in the cycles of life, until we die from this earthly life, to be born again in resurrection through the ultimate healing and living power of the God of wholeness.
During our lifetimes, we yearn to live into that ultimate vision of God-wholeness over and over again; loving God, neighbor and self in all the myriad ways that we can. When we do come to the end of our earthly days, love of the kind Jesus showed us becomes the womb by which God overpowers death, and we are born again.
Jesus the Christ not only told Nicodemus of that born-again-resurrection; we know of the risen Jesus calling us forth to a coming resurrection from the stories of the garden on the third day following Jesus' burial. We tell the stories of Jesus' resurrection each year. Do we believe that God sent him to tell us, that in Christ, this is our story as well?
If resurrection only belongs to Jesus, as a story, it isn't real. It is only real if it is truly believed to be our own story as well.
This Easter, do we have a story to tell?
"Dying is a wild night, and a new road."
--Emily Dickinson. (1830-86)
Tammy Rottschaefer
Associate Minister of Spiritual Formation
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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