That is one of my favorite car-toons of all time. JUST in case you missed it, the implication is that the pastor is not preaching the same sermon every Sunday, but that the man needling him only comes on Easter. And no, the thrust of this article is not to berate anyone for not coming to church regularly enough. Just using the cartoon as a launching pad.
I remember talking to a Mormon friend back in high school who asked me if our church celebrated Easter. I knew next to nothing about what Mormons believed and worried that the question might be some kind of trap. So, trying to be clever, I said, “we celebrate it every Sunday!” and proceeded to explain that everything about our worship is due to the his-toric reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
I still don’t know or remember what the point of the question was. But I stand by my answer, even if my original motive in giving it was less than noble. Everything we celebrate as believers, everything we BELIEVE as believers, is because of the resurrection. With no resurrection, there is no Christianity!
Jesus taught a lot of things. He is held in high regard among people of various religious disciplines; even among non-religious, Jesus is often held up as a man of wisdom. A surprising number of people feel drawn to Him as a philosopher or, I don’t know, a guru of some kind. They just want to divorce Him from all the overtly religious things about Him. Do away with the statements He made about the exclusive nature of truth, and they like Him. Do away with the ridiculous notion of the resurrec-tion, and they like Him. But what do you do with a man who made such extraordinary claims about Himself? What do you do with a man who, in addition to all the unpopular things He said, clearly stated that He would rise from the dead 3 days after dying? Well, you simply ignore that man. And probably, you ignore every-thing else he taught. Unless… unless He really did rise from the dead. Because if He did that, well, that changes EVERYTHING.
Because if He did that, I can believe everything else He said. And He said this: “because I live, you shall live also” (John 14:19). He said He would rise from the dead, and He did. He said I would rise from the dead, and I will. Meanwhile, His Spirit, the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead, DWELLS IN ME right now! In you, too! So you see, the resurrection IS something we celebrate all the time. But let’s do take some time to focus on it, to acknowledge its primacy of place among all the events and moments in history. He is risen; this changes everything.
