Sunday, April 16, 2017

Easter Blah Blah

This is, based on a reading of past blog posts, the fourth consecutive year that our group will not gather on what people in the Christendom crowd, in English speaking areas call Easter.

According to Bede, known as the Father of English History, the word traces to the name of the pagan goddess Eostre in whose honor pagan Anglo Saxons held feasts during the month of April. By his time the pagan feasts (A.D. 700ish), had been Christianized but the pagan name had been for the celebration of fertility had been retained.

For many reasons, our group disregards today's paganish/Christendomized celebration, not the least of these for me is that Jesus didn't teach or model anything close such a Holy Day and that there is no authority whatsoever for it among what early disciples did or taught.

I researched posts here from past Easters to trace a progression of my thinking and our practice in response to Oestre here at Faith.

It was, I believe, four years ago that we drove together to a largish seeker sensitive church to try consuming their Easter morning extravaganza and that field trip was a disaster. None of us were pleased and none of us were blessed, each for our own reasons.

And, that was our last stab at an Easter gathering.

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In recent years, the Sloat family has met at the home mom and dad live in and had the noon meal with them. In the past year, mom and dad have moved to Personal Care and dad is increasingly distressed by alterations in his routine. There wasn't even talk about getting together this year. We will make a phone call.

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In recent years, Easter day, brings back memories of Evie's battle with cancer. It was on the evening before Easter Sunday that she discovered the lump. Seven years ago. Easter has always brought back that memory for me every year since.

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One final note.  Working in a grocery store, I was struck this year by the degree that Easter has been de-Christianized and become, not so much secularized or even paganized--which, of course, it has been--but how much it has become sentimentalized, even by church people.

There's so much brouhaha about it that the true significance even of the artificial Holy Day is lost.

I understand that it's ironic that I, of all people, would be chagrined over the loss of the true meaning of an observance that I reject as, essentially, pagan in origin.

But, I do despair for the souls of the people who are steered away from the power of the Gospel by all hub bub associated with what Easter has become.

I think of Jesus being filled with compassion for the people in the crowd because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

So much mindlessness and inappropriate pomp among so many when the gospel is so powerful in its simplicity.

My heart breaks.

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I've already hit publish for what came before this addendum but I want to add this:

If we did Easter here, it would be with Paul's idea that he had become all things to all people that he might save some.

It seems to me that, in today's church world, it's the churchy people who have been won away from the simple truth of the gospel.

Yet, I suspect that most think that they are doing the Paul thing.

The truth, though, is that the church is losing the culture. The secular and the pagan and the sentimental is winning. The gospel is losing.

We must repent.

5 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. I can read English and, with the help of a lexicon, French, German, Hebrew, Aramaic and Koine Greek.

      But, not this.

      Delete
    2. Copy and paste it into your browser. It is a YouTube link. Sorry that wasn't clear.

      Delete
  2. I guess, really, the question for those of us who, based on the vows we've taken, use the Bible as our only rule of faith and PRACTICE, is: What did Jesus and the early disciples call the Holy Day ritualizing the resurrection?

    ReplyDelete