Elliot Ritzema

Author: Elliot

  • May 2010: Books Read

    1. Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire by Sylvia Keesmaat and Brian Walsh. This is an unusual book. It is about the letter of Paul to the Colossians, but it is not a commentary in the usual sense of the word. In fact, the authors in the Preface call it an “anti-commentary.” Rather than digging into the technical details that commentaries usually deal with, their main goal is to read Colossians in such a way as to make it relevant to our current postmodern and globalized context.

    I really enjoyed this book. It is creative, and it did a lot to convince me that Colossians can in fact address contemporary concerns. I’m always skittish when the word “empire” gets thrown around, though. To their credit, at least Walsh and Keesmaat specify what they are talking about when they use the word. Empires, for them, are “(1) built on systemic centralizations of power, (2) secured by structures of socioeconomic and military control, (3) religiously legitimated by powerful myths, and (4) sustained by a proliferation of imperial images that captivate the imaginations of the population” (58). In parts of the book, it seems that when Walsh and Keesmaat talk about empire, they are talking about globalization. In other parts (like on pages 62 and 187), they attach the word to the United States. I think that the United States can be empire-ish in some of the things that it does, but making a one-to-one correlation between the United States and ancient empires is overstating the case. It’s bombastic, but ultimately unhelpful, in my opinion.

    That is my main gripe about the book. Aside from that, I think this is a creative book that challenges Christians to think of ways to live more faithfully (if less comfortably) in our present context. For that, Walsh and Keesmaat should be commended.

    2. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas. Reviewed earlier here.

  • Chelanigans

    Over Memorial Day weekend, Mary and I went to Chelan, WA. It’s a wonderful town in central Washington, on the south end of Lake Chelan. It is also – as we found out while booking our accommodations – party central for college students during Memorial Day weekend. Mary’s younger sister and her boyfriend were well aware of this when we told them that we were going. They introduced us to the word “Chelanigans.” I was never clear on whether that word refers to what happens in Chelan over Memorial Day weekend, or the people who go to Chelan looking for a good time. Maybe it’s both.

    It was not without reservations, then, that we got into the car for the drive to Chelan. Our mood got better as we went, though, for two reasons: we were listening to the audiobook of Stuff Christians Like, which is hilarious, and the weather kept getting better as we headed east. It was cloudy and damp west of the mountains, but cleared up the farther we got over Stevens Pass.

    On our way through the mountains, we stopped in Leavenworth. Leavenworth is a small town with a great idea: attract tourists by turning itself into a mock Bavarian village. The whole Bavarian village idea came along well after the town was named “Leavenworth,” but aside from that, the resemblance is uncanny. We enjoyed the nice weather by strolling past the shops, and then stopped for a very German lunch: a schnitzel, a reuben and some beer.

    We pulled into Chelan later that afternoon, and it was as described: many groups of people in their late teens and early 20s walking around downtown in their swimsuits. I couldn’t help but notice that there was very little mixing of the sexes in the groups we saw (I suppose they had to get a little more alcohol in them to work up the courage for that). There were also a few catcalls, the point of which I’ve never understood. I’ve never understood the point of walking around town in your swimsuit either, even when I was in college. In short, I completely failed to understand how what these college students were doing could be called a good time. Maybe I’m abnormal in that respect.

    Anyway, the party scene was pretty easy to avoid. After checking in at the B&B, we went to dinner at the Vin du Lac winery, which was full of old fogeys like us. We tasted wine, we listened to some live music, we bought a bottle of Riesling for Mary’s dad for Father’s Day. Then we went back to the B&B, watched part of a movie, and went to sleep.

    The next morning, we walked to Starbucks and read for a while, then walked back for breakfast. Then we drove to Manson (which is a few miles up the north side of the lake) to have a look around. We went to a wine tasting at the Lake Chelan winery and bought some cider. Then we went back to Chelan to have lunch at the Campbell House Restaurant, which we followed up with some ice cream. That evening, we tasted wine and had dinner at Tsillan Cellars. According to its Web site, this is the “crown jewel” of Chelan wine country, so unlike the first two wineries we had to pay a few dollars to do wine tasting here. It was a wonderful experience, though.

    After breakfast the next morning, we drove back. Turns out a lot of people were headed back west on Highway 2, because traffic was bumper-to-bumper for quite a ways. The weather also steadily worsened as we went west. Bummer. It takes more than that to ruin a good weekend, though. I’m sure we will be back sometime. But probably not Memorial Day weekend.

  • Book Review: Mind Your Own Mortgage

    Mind Your Own Mortgage is a tract for the times. It was written in light of the recent financial meltdown, and seeks to get the U.S. economy in better shape by encouraging people to get their home economies in better shape.

    The book comes in three main sections: Get a Grip on It (your mortgage), Shop for It and Manage It. The first section gives the lay of the land, talking about how the mortgage market works and how so many people have managed to ruin their finances. The second section is all about the mortgage shopping process, and encourages you to select a mortgage using the Mind Your Own Mortgage shopping system which uses forms from an accompanying Web site (be warned: full access to the Web site requires a paid membership). The third section talks about how to pay down a mortgage efficiently and when to refinance.

    I am relatively young and have never owned a home, so this book was eye-opening for me. It taught me more about the mortgage business than I had ever known before. My head was spinning at points because of all the new information, especially while reading the second section. At the end of the book, I took away a few main principles, which Bernabe mentioned so frequently that I wasn’t allowed to forget: get a fixed-rate mortgage, not an adjustable-rate one. Shopping for a mortgage is about price (rate, points and fees), not about monthly payment. Don’t give in to the culture of consumption, but prioritize your spending so as to leave room for what’s important: relationships.

    Some of the details discussed in this book may well be out of date in a few years, but it seems to me that the principles Bernabe emphasizes will stand the test of time. I’d recommend this book to anyone looking to buy a home, especially if they feel intimidated by the mortgage business or that they are living beyond their means.

  • Stuff Christians Like

    Mary and I went to Lake Chelan over Memorial Day weekend, and on the drive we listened to the audiobook of Stuff Christians Like by Jonathan Acuff. It is a book spun off of the Web site of the same name, which in turn is a Christian version of Stuff White People Like, a Web site (and book) by Christian Lander. I first heard about the Web site almost two years ago from my friend Tony, who told me about #124: The kid that makes out with girls from other youth groups. When I saw that the book was a free download from christianaudio.com (sadly, this has now expired, though they have a new free download each month), I got it right away.

    Mary and I both loved it. For one thing, this is what an audiobook ought to be: it is read by the author, and includes explanatory (and often humorous) asides that are not included in the print version. Acuff is a pastor’s kid/copywriter who lives in Atlanta and understands the North American evangelical subculture. For example, he understands how ironic it is that one thing that Christians like – making their own version of something that is popular in wider culture – is the very thing that he is doing.

    Wander over to the site and check it out. If you are taking a road trip with me in the future, we can listen to the book. Otherwise, you can buy the audiobook or print version (which I’m told has neat diagrams).

    Before I go, I wanted to direct you to one of my favorites: #269: Understanding how metrosexual your worship leader is (a handy guide).

  • April 2010: Books Read

    1. The Hole in Our Gospel: What Does God Expect of Us? by Richard Stearns. April was a busy month for me, with starting a new full-time job as well as continuing with my internship obligations at church. That’s why the only book I finished this month was The Hole in Our Gospel by the president of World Vision US, Rich Stearns (Here is an interview with him in Christianity Today).

    This was a challenging book for me. Not because it was hard to read, but because it was hard to not become numb to the many statistics that Stearns cited, showing just how poor so many people are. The “hole” of the title is that many Christians in the United States have decided that the gospel is nothing more than a transaction, in which God forgives them of their sins and they get to go to heaven when they die. The real gospel is not less than this, but it is so much more, according to Stearns. One thing in particular that it involves (and which is the focus of this book) is serving the poor in a self-sacrificial way. The most compelling part of this book, for me, was Stearns telling his own story of how he went from being the president of Lenox, a fine tableware company, to being the president of World Vision. His story of how God grabbed him and drove him to care more about the poor gave me hope that God can grab more Christians and show them their obligation to assist those in need.

    I don’t know whether this book will change the American church or not. We can pat ourselves on the back for being generous, but in fact the percentage that so many of us give is far below the level of sacrificial giving that we read about in the Bible (specifically in 2 Corinthians 8-9). I hear a lot of complaining these days about how the government is taxing too much, and I wonder sometimes if we aren’t being judged for doing little with our money besides feathering our own nests. I hear people say that Jesus said “The poor you will always have with you” (Mark 14:7), thinking that this excuses them for being selfish. Far from letting people off the hook, though, Jesus was alluding to Deuteronomy 15:11: “Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.’”

    You will always have the poor among you. Therefore, open your hand. Not out of guilt (and despite the ranting of the previous paragraph, I really don’t think that trying to induce guilt is the best way to get people to be generous), but because God has blessed you.

  • Book Review of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy


    Eric Metaxas, who is already familiar to aficionados of Christian biography through Amazing Grace, his biography of William Wilberforce, has written a fast-paced and informative portrait of Bonhoeffer, the German pastor and theologian who resisted the Nazis even unto his death in a concentration camp in April 1945. This book, while not nearly as long as Eberhard Bethge’s 1000-plus page authoritative biography, is still a substantial 542 pages, not including endnotes.

    While Metaxas relies heavily on Bonhoeffer’s own words to tell his story, one way in which he keeps the pace fast is that he does not enter into a detailed discussion of Bonhoeffer’s written work, which one can get elsewhere. It seems that Metaxas is far more interested in showing the real-life consequences of Bonhoeffer’s theology, instead of giving a lengthy exposition of it.

    This is a wonderful book, and a real page-turner, but there were a few problems that might have gone away with more vigilant editing. For example, it mentions that Bonhoeffer’s brother Karl-Friedrich studied with Alfred Einstein and Max Planck in the 1920s. Karl-Friedrich was a physical chemist. Alfred Einstein was a musicologist. I can only assume that Metaxas meant Albert, the more famous Einstein? Also, there is a quote from Matthew 10 that says it is from the Sermon on the Mount – but Matthew 10, while part of Jesus’ teaching, is not part of the Sermon on the Mount. These are minor errors, and didn’t seriously impede my enjoyment of the book.

    This book will not replace Bethge’s biography; after all, it is hard to get closer to Bonhoeffer than his best friend. But what Metaxas does is introduce Bonhoeffer to a new generation that will greatly benefit from knowing that such a man existed – a man who was obedient to God (not merely to a set of principles), even when that obedience brought him into deadly conflict with his church and his country.

  • March 2010: Books Read

    1. Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain. I’m a big fan of Mark Twain. As a fan of Twain’s, I have already read his most well-known works, like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. I have also read Roughing It, Life on the MIssissippi and an awful lot of his essays. It was about time, then, that I got around to reading Puddn’head Wilson.

    It was not bad, but clearly there is a reason why this is not among his most-read stuff. It is about two children who were switched as infants, with one being raised as the scion of a wealthy family and the other being raised as a slave. The plot was interesting enough, but for a “mystery,” the ending was not at all surprising. The characters were not as compelling as in some of his better work. And this book was written in the 1890s, when Twain was becoming more and more of a cynic – as can easily be seen in the epigraphs at the beginning of every chapter. Though he was still talented, his later work is, with some exceptions, just not as entertaining to read.

    2. Jane Austen (Christian Encounters Series) by Peter Leithart. Reviewed earlier here.

    3. Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire by William T. Cavanaugh. This is an excellent, short work on the interaction between Christianity and economics. It is made up of four essays, and is only 103 pages long. Cavanaugh is Catholic, and draws mainly on Catholic theologians, but his theology is not so distinctly Catholic that other Christians can’t benefit from his insights.

    Cavanaugh critiques the definition of economic freedom as only “freedom from” and proposes instead that economic freedom ought to be “freedom for” participation in community and realizing our humanity more fully. He also critiques consumerism, globalization and the economics of scarcity. It is simultaneously a quick read and a dense read, and unfortunately I read it over a month ago and can’t describe its arguments with the nuance they deserve. It is a book well worth picking up, though.

    4. The Glory of Preaching: Participating in God’s Transformation of the World by Darrell W. Johnson. I studied preaching under Johnson at Regent College, so it was no surprise that I found much to agree with in this book. He honed the material for this book in his preaching classes, so a lot of it was not new.

    What is unusual about this book, as over against most other books about preaching, is Johnson’s confidence in the biblical text. That is not to say that other books on preaching are not confident in the Bible to change people’s lives. It is unusual, though, for a writer to say, as Johnson does, that when the living God speaks, something ALWAYS happens. Another unique thing about this book is that Johnson thinks preachers are not responsible for applying the text to people’s lives. I remember, when I was in preaching class, that some students pushed back on this. Johnson was adamant, though. Preachers can imply what the text means – they can state the truth that the text leads us to. But applying – that is, telling people what particular things they ought to do – is the job of the Holy Spirit.

    This is a wonderful book, and one that I will return to over the years.

    5. The Cross of Christ by John R. W. Stott. I decided that during Lent this year, in addition to fasting from something, I would read something that led me to focus on Jesus. I’ve had this book on my shelf since my time at Regent, and it is as good a book as any to accomplish that goal.

    There isn’t a lot that I could say about this book, aside from saying that it is a classic work on what Jesus’ death meant and means. If you are interested in learning more about what Jesus’ death accomplished, this is the first place to turn.

  • Matthew 13:1-23 – Listening that Leads to Living

    I preached this sermon on April 25 at Bellingham Covenant Church, as part of a series on Jesus’ parables. These are my notes, and not necessarily exactly what I said.

    We are spending Easter season this year focusing on Jesus’ parables. Today we will look at the Parable of the Sower, which is a parable about parables. Jesus here talks about why people respond the way they do to his teaching, and he does this by saying that there are four groups of people represented by four different kinds of dirt. Jesus goes through these dirts progressively, from least receptive to most receptive.

    As I go through these kinds of dirt, I want you to recognize that we’re all one kind of dirt. The question to ask ourselves is, “What kind of dirt are we?”

    Soil 1 – This is the soil along the path, on which the seed falls but birds take it away.

    These are the people who don’t understand. Some people think that this is a passage about predestination. These people couldn’t understand because they had no choice but not to understand. God decided before they were born that some people would understand and some people wouldn’t, and too bad for the people who don’t. After all, Jesus says in verse 11, “the secrets of the kingdom of heaven have been given to you, but not to them,” doesn’t he?

    But I don’t think this passage is about God condemning people unfairly. Jesus wants people to hear his message, and when we look at Jesus we see what God is like. I think we get a clue of what this parable is about based on where it is placed in Jesus’ ministry. Matthew, Mark and Luke all have this parable, and they put it in slightly different places, but they all have one thing in common: they start out talking about how everyone responded positively to Jesus’ teaching, then Jesus starts to encounter some opposition from religious leaders, and then – the parable of the sower.

    This means, I think, that Jesus isn’t deliberately trying to keep people out. He is trying to explain why some people respond to his message and some don’t. The ones who don’t, the ones who are the first kind of dirt, are people who have hardened their own hearts. They decided that Jesus can’t teach them anything, so they don’t listen. The difference between the disciples and the people who didn’t understand isn’t that the disciples were so smart (If the gospels teach us anything about the disciples, it is that they were certainly not the smartest). It’s that the disciples cared enough to stick around for the explanation! Anybody could understand parables if they think they have something to learn. The focus here is not predestination, but revelation. God has revealed himself. How do people respond? Today, just like in Jesus’ day, some people are receptive to learning more, but others are just not interested. They think they have it all figured out. They trust their own wisdom, and don’t feel like they have anything to learn. The way to avoid being this first soil is to be receptive. You don’t have to have it all figured out. Just be receptive to Jesus and what he wants to teach you.

    These next two kinds of dirt that end up responding negatively actually start out positively. We in the church need to pay close attention to them.

    Soil 2 is the soil that is shallow. The seed springs up, but is quickly withered by the sun because of shallow roots. These people start out hearing the message with joy. But we find that hearing with joy is not enough. Trouble and persecution cause people to drop out if they have no roots. Fortunately we live in a place where there is no official government persecution of Christians. But it is still possible to be looked down on for being a Christian, and this can sometimes be the case. It’s not popular to believe that following Jesus is the only way for people to be saved. It’s also not popular to believe that there is even a need for people to be saved. This kind of persecution can happen to anyone, but I especially want to highlight those people who are raised in the church, but fall away once they move out of their parents’ house. I want to tell you my story, and contrast it with the story of others.

    I grew up in a Christian home, and we went to church every Sunday. When I was 11, I accepted Jesus as my savior and was baptized. But as is the case with many people, my teenage years were difficult ones. My parents divorced when I was 13. I had a lot of the same problems many teenagers faced: I lacked self-confidence, I had acne. I didn’t have a great relationship with my parents because I had lost my trust in them. When I was 16 I got my first job. It was nice to have a little money, and the more I worked, the more money I got. At first I didn’t work on Sundays because I would go to church, but after a little while I started working on Sundays. They were between youth pastors at the church, and they had been for a couple of years. I didn’t feel like anyone would miss me there if I didn’t go, so I stopped and started working on Sundays instead.

    But after several months, I came to a point where I felt I had to make a decision. I still considered myself a Christian, even though I didn’t go to church and rarely read my Bible. I decided that either I was going to give up on Christianity, or I was going to start living it – which meant going back to church, praying, trying to grow closer to God and find out what he wanted me to to with my life. And what it came down to for me was Jesus. I couldn’t give up on Jesus. I didn’t trust my parents anymore, and I didn’t feel that people at church cared about me all that much, but I had to stay a Christian because I loved Jesus and I knew that he loved me, even if I didn’t feel loved.

    That was a turning point for me. I went back to church, got to know the new youth pastor, and when I went to college, I decided that I wanted to seek out a group of Christians on campus that I could be a part of. When I got to school, I found out that my RA was a Christian who was active in InterVarsity, so I joined InterVarsity, went on retreats, went to Bible studies, and eventually led a Bible study.

    The more time I spent at college, the more I met people who had very similar backgrounds to mine. They were raised in Christian homes, going to church every Sunday. But when they got to college, they stopped going to church. In fact, they stopped having any sort of community with other Christians. They weren’t involved in InterVarsity or any of the other Christian student groups on campus. Some of them spent most weekends drunk at parties on Fraternity Row.

    What’s the difference between them and me? Am I smarter? Did my parents work harder than theirs? Did my church work harder than theirs?

    No.

    The only difference between us is that, for some reason, my roots went deeper. Does this mean that there’s no hope for them? Not at all. I still think that God is working on everyone. I still think that they can soften their hearts. I still pray that they do.

    Soil 3 is the soil on which the seed grows up, but is eventually choked by thorn bushes. We’re moving farther up the ladder of accepting Jesus’ message. These people can make it through the persecution, no problem. In their early days they maybe go out evangelizing on street corners, and they go on mission trips – but then something happens. Maybe they get married; maybe they get a nice house; maybe they get a mortgage; maybe they have to save up to send their kids through college. They start to worry about the future. They try to get as much money as they can to ensure that bad things don’t happen to them.

    In other words, they turn into respectable, middle class people. Worries and the deceitfulness of wealth trip them up and they become unfruitful.

    Notice Jesus’ choice of words: unfruitful. He doesn’t say they stop going to church. He doesn’t say they stop calling themselves Christians. He says they stop producing fruit. Their faith doesn’t show itself in good works, which means they really don’t have faith at all.

    Soil 4 is the soil that produces fruit. These are the people who don’t just hear, but understand. Hearing with understanding is enough, Jesus says in verse 23. What is hearing with understanding? Hearing that leads to action. Listening that leads to living. That is what Jesus wants from us.

    New Testament scholar Klyne Snodgrass, whose book Stories with Intent is a wonderful resource on Jesus’ parables, says this: “Churches should not be complicit in allowing people to think an initial response unaccompanied by productive living is saving faith” (176).

    This parable encourages us to internalize the seed so that it affects everything we do.

    So what does the seed represent? Jesus says it is God’s Word. When we as Christians think of God’s Word, we think of the Bible – and rightly so, since we believe that it is inspired by God and that he still uses it to speak to us today. But in Jesus’ day the Bible didn’t exist yet. When Jesus uses the phrase “God’s Word,” he’s referring to revelation – not the last book of the Bible, but God revealing what he is like. Jesus’ person and message are the word that he is speaking about.

    And Jesus’ message is that he is God in human form, and it is his job to set the world right. God has given him authority to teach, to work miracles, and to forgive people of what they have done wrong. When he was crucified, he served as a sacrifice that brought about forgiveness, the same way sacrifices worked in the Old Testament, only better. Because this time, God was sacrificing himself in order to forgive people. Because forgiveness always hurts. And when Jesus rose from the dead, God vindicated him. Jesus’ resurrection was God’s way of saying, “He was right. He really was speaking for me, and acting for me.” And if you listen to him, and trust him, and understand to the point of staking your whole life on him, you too will have life in the same way that Jesus now has life. That’s the seed.

    There were a lot of people in Jesus’ day who heard his message with joy. But they never let their hearing turn to action. They didn’t let their roots go deep into God’s Word and a community of disciples. They let themselves get distracted. We run the same risk today. Pride, persecution and the deceitfulness and distractions of wealth can keep us from being fruitful.

    I’ll close with another quote from Klyne Snodgrass, because he says it so well:

    “The parable is about hearing that leads to productive living, and adapting the parable will mean enabling people to move past merely hearing words – even with joy – to hearing that captures the whole person. People think they can look like giant oaks without putting down deep roots. When they realize how much effort it takes to put down deep roots, they too often settle for being bramble bushes” (176).

    In the words of Jesus: Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.

  • Whew

    Well friends, I’m back to blogging. April has been an incredibly busy month, but I’m starting to feel again that I have things to say and a little more time to say them.

    March 31 was my last day as a school bus driver. Leaving was bittersweet, since I truly became attached to those kids. However, I would not want to go back. Right now, I am the beloved former bus driver who can do no wrong. If I were the current bus driver, I would again be Satan’s brother as far as those kids were concerned.

    On April 5, the day before my 31st birthday, I started a new job at Logos Bible Software, in downtown Bellingham. It has gone well, though the huge difference between it and my previous job has required some adjustment. Now I sit at a desk for eight hours a day, looking at a computer screen. While school bus driving did require a fair amount of sitting, it also required a bit more in the area of physical exertion. I mean, somebody had to stop the bus and go thump those kids (just kidding. I never laid a hand on any students, as the camera on the bus could attest).

    Despite the fact that I am now much more sedentary, I do enjoy my new job more than bus driving. The great thing about bus driving was that I had three hours off in the middle of the day, and when the best thing about a job is the time that you are able to spend not working, something is wrong. I work in the Design and Editorial department at Logos. The main job of “D&E,” as far as I can tell, is to make all the information available to a Logos user more accessible. When people buy a Logos base package, they have access to hundreds of books. But those books are not on a bookshelf in one’s house, so it’s easy to forget that they are there. We come up with features and databases that make that information more accessible. I like to think of us as phantom librarians. I have been working on a new feature since my first day, and I am most likely going to continue working on it for a few more months. I can’t tell you what it is, though, because then I would have to kill you.

    In addition to getting used to the new job, one thing that made April so busy was that I continued as intern at BCC. I will finish at the end of May, just before the new intern takes over. For the past month, even though I was now working a full-time job, I still had my intern duties – which included a 4-week Sunday School class on Colossians, and preaching on April 25. Now that the preaching date is finished, I look forward to relaxing a little bit next month and thinking about how I would like to be involved as Elliot the regular old layman, instead of Elliot the Intern. It should be fun.

    Soon and very soon, I will review the books that I have been reading for the past couple of months. I finished a lot in March, but because of the busyness of April I should only finish about two this month.

  • Easter Sunrise Devotional 2010

    Easter Sunrise Service / 7:30 a.m. / 4-5-10 / Bellingham Covenant Church

    When I was asked to share a devotional for this service, I tried to think of a funny story about an Easter celebration from when I was young.

    I wasn’t able to think of one.

    But I can share with you what Easter meant to me as a child:

    Every year at church, they would give the children colored hard-boiled eggs. I remember sitting in the pew for the rest of the service, cradling the cool egg in my hands. I don’t really remember any of the Easter sermons I heard growing up.

    But my parents made sure that I understood what Easter was about. Although I did participate in things like Easter egg hunts, my parents always emphasized that Easter was about Jesus’ resurrection. This began with my first birthday. My first birthday was on Easter, and my mom made me a cake in the shape of a lamb.

    Another way they did this was that instead of getting an Easter basket filled with candies, instead it would be a Spring Basket. I’d get it on March 21st, the first day of spring, instead of Easter.

    I’m glad my parents made a distinction between the ways Easter is celebrated sometimes, and the real meaning of Easter.

    We live in a time and a culture where there is a memory of Christianity, but it is very weak.

    Because it is so weak, Christian celebrations like Easter and Christmas get diluted. Christmas becomes about giving gifts to loved ones, instead of God’s gift of his Son. Easter becomes about spring as the celebration of new life in the natural world, instead of about celebrating Jesus’ conquering death with his resurrection.

    An interesting tradition that I learned about when I lived in the Czech Republic was the pomlazka. It is a whip made out of willow branches, and traditionally boys are supposed to whip girls on the day after Easter because it was thought that this brought youth and health – besides being a good excuse to flirt with girls. Another tradition is dousing people with water. This also was supposed to bring youth and health.

    Every country has traditions like these, but they don’t have anything to do with the reason why we as Christians celebrate Easter.

    So why do we celebrate Easter? There is one main reason, and two other reasons that flow out of it.

    1. Jesus conquered death. Some churches teach that Easter is about Jesus’ teaching living on in the hearts of his followers. But Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 that if Jesus has not been raised, our faith is worthless. Sin has brought death to every human being who ever lived, and Jesus’ resurrection means that sin has been defeated. Death has been defeated. Death didn’t just take its hands off Jesus for a little while; Death’s hands were broken. This is in contrast to Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead in John 11. Death took its hands off Lazarus for a while, but it came for him again. When Jesus rose from the dead, death never came for him again.

    Another way that Jesus’ and Lazarus’ resurrections were different is the kind of body they had. Lazarus had the same body he had always had, and he needed people to take the grave clothes off of him when he came out of the tomb. By contrast, Jesus had a new body that mysteriously used up the material of his old body. He was able to pass through solid objects. He didn’t need to have the stone rolled away. It was for our benefit. So we could see that he had overcome death.

    2. Jesus will raise us from the dead. Jesus’ resurrection means that if we have faith in him, we will rise from the dead the same as he did. With the same kind of body he had.

    One of my favorite Easter songs over the past few years is a song written by my friend, Ben Keyes, called “From the Grave.” The chorus goes:

    Hallelujah we will rise again
    Angels, roll the stone away
    Lord has raised his Son
    Victory is won
    He’s gonna call us from the grave

    The verses are on this same theme, of God’s raising us from the dead. One verse goes:

    I want to work in your kingdom
    Give me back my hands
    I want to work in your kingdom
    Roll the stone away for me
    I want to clap my hands in glory
    Give me back my hands
    I want to clap my hands in glory
    Roll the stone away for me

    At the resurrection, we’re not going to be playing harps on clouds. We’re going to have resurrection bodies, and we are going to be working in God’s new heavens and new earth.

    3. Jesus’ resurrection also means that what we do in our lives today matters. Matter matters. Paul talks for 57 verses in 1 Corinthians 15 about the resurrection. In the very last verse of that chapter, verse 58, he follows all that indicative with an imperative. He tells the Corinthians what all that talk about the resurrection means for them: “Therefore… stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”

    I can’t say this any better than N.T. Wright said in his book, Surprised by Hope:

    But what we can and must do in the present, if we are obedient to the gospel, if we are following Jesus, and if we are indwelt, energized, and directed by the Spirit, is to build for the kingdom. This brings us back to 1 Corinthians 15:58 once more: what you do in the Lord is not in vain. You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that’s about to roll over a cliff. You are not restoring a great painting that’s shortly going to be thrown on the fire. You are not planting roses in a garden that’s about to be dug up for a building site. You are – strange though it may seem, almost as hard to believe as the resurrection itself – accomplishing something that will become in due course part of God’s new world. Every act of love, gratitude, and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or to walk; every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support, for one’s fellow human beings and for that matter one’s fellow nonhuman creatures; and of course every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel, builds up the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption, and makes the name of Jesus honored in the world – all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make. That is the logic of the mission of God. God’s recreation of his wonderful world, which began with the resurrection of Jesus and continues mysteriously as God’s people live in the risen Christ and in the power of his Spirit, means that what we do in Christ and by the Spirit in the present is not wasted. It will last all the way into God’s new world. In fact, it will be enhanced there (208, italics original).

    I don’t remember any Easter sermons from when I was growing up, but I remember what my parents taught me:

    Jesus conquered death.

    Because Jesus conquered death, we will rise from the dead.

    Because Jesus conquered death and he will raise us from the dead, how we live our lives matters.