“Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live…” (NRSV, John 11:25)

The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ were not commemorated separately by the Christian Church until 300 years after their occurrence.  Instead, one great festival was held each year near the time of the Jewish Passover, beginning late on what we now call Holy Saturday and continuing through the night until the early hours of Easter Day.

It combined everything that we associate with Good Friday and Easter, and it commemorated the whole drama of salvation which crowned Our Lord’s earthly mission, a Feast of Christ “…who died, yes, who was raised from the dead…” (RSV, Romans 8:34), who laid down his life that he might take it again (John 10:17).

So all through the great persecutions of the first three centuries, year by year – indeed Sunday by Sunday – the Christians met in peril of their lives to celebrate the salvation won by the Crucified and Risen Christ, that salvation which has always been the central pivot of the whole Christian religion.  For upon the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ hang our deliverance from the power of evil, our restoration to God, our union with him and all our hope of eternal life.

When the persecutions ended and pilgrimages to the Holy Places in Palestine became safe and frequent, the custom arose of commemorating the events of Holy Week and Easter approximately on the actual sites and at the actual times of their original occurrence.  That was in the fourth century, but another 100 years were to pass before the same observance was adopted elsewhere.

Nevertheless, although we commemorate Our Lord’s Passion and Resurrection on their separate days in chronological order, the two form together a single swiftly moving action.  The Crucifixion reached its climax in the Resurrection, the visible outcome and proof of Christ’s superiority and victory over moral and spiritual evil, when God decisively and finally reversed what devil and human beings had done.

The Apostles realised that from the beginning.  So we find St Peter in his first public speech at Pentecost declaring, “Jesus of Nazareth…you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law.  But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power” (NRSV, Acts 2:22,23,24, our emphasis).

On Good Friday he had endured the full fury of all that evil could do, and in the end evil had failed to drag him down to its own level.  The Prince of this world had come and had found that he had no power over Christ (King James Bible, John 14:30).  The Apostles had seen with their own eyes that his resistance to evil was total and invincible, and that death itself could destroy neither him nor his power.  For not only did they speak and eat with him after his Resurrection but they saw the same power at work in themselves that they had seen in him when he faced the full impact of wickedness and emerged victorious.

So Easter Day was the proclamation of Christ’s victory over evil and over death.  And from that day onwards the spiritual and moral power of the Crucified Christ has been bestowed by the Risen Christ on those who are his own, enabling them to resist the evil in the world around them and to overcome the evil within their own hearts.

Indeed, the Christian life itself is described in Holy Scripture as a re-enactment within one’s own heart of Good Friday and Easter Day; of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection of Christ.  That is to say, each individual Christian is called to die to self and to live instead to God in Christ Jesus.

In other words I have to cease to be the selfish and un-Christlike person that my lower self wants me to be; and instead to become my true self that God wants me to be.  I have to kill off that false and unpleasant self by resisting and overcoming and finally destroying all its self-centred and unpleasant manifestations, whether they show themselves in my thinking, my speaking or my acting.

It is a process which St Peter calls dying to sin and living to righteousness (King James Bible, 1 Peter 2:24), and it can be achieved only by the grace and power of the Risen Christ on the one hand and a determined struggle by us on the other.

What has to be destroyed is not merely the obvious sins, but that whole inner attitude which is their source and which is only concerned with self – with what I want: and not with God and with what he wants.  In other words, what has to be destroyed is the whole monstrous growth; not merely the leaves which flourish above the surface, but also the hidden roots which go deep down and which provide the sustenance and maintain the life of the leaves.

St Paul’s Easter message to us is clear and unmistakeable: “...if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.  Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (NRSV, Colossians 3:1,2-3).

“Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life…and put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (RSV, Ephesians 4:22,23).

Prayer: dying and living

“God of Life,
who for our redemption gave your only-begotten Son
to the death of the cross,
and by his glorious resurrection
have delivered us from the power of our enemy:
grant us so to die daily to sin,
that we may evermore live with him in the joy of his risen life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen" (1)

Reference

1. © The Archbishops' Council of the Church of England (2006) Common Worship Times and Seasons: The Easter Liturgy.  Post Communion prayer for Easter Day.  Available from: http://www.churchofengland.org/media/41157/tseasterlit.pdf (Accessed 22 March 2013) (Internet).

Note

The RSV quotes are taken from the 1952 edition of the Old and New Testaments published by Collins.