2007 Easter Message from the Rev. R. Randy Day, general secretary of the General Board of Global Ministries

Resurrection 2007: A Letter to United Methodists

Dear Brothers and Sisters:

Do you ever stop to wonder why our Christian celebration of the Resurrection of Christ is accompanied each spring by colored eggs, bunny rabbits, baby chicks, and pounds of chocolate? I will admit that I do, and I don’t always feel charitable about these cultural trappings. An easy reaction is to blame commercial interests, but Wal-Mart, Macy’s, and Hallmark aren’t really responsible.

The “Easter-ization” of the central festival of Christianity began centuries ago as the church expanded to include various tribes and nations. Somewhere I read that it was easier for people to accept a new religion than to give up old holiday customs; the Nativity and Crucifixion/Resurrection came to overlap older Roman and northern European festivals. We inherited yule logs and Santa Clause in winter and eggs and rabbits in spring, along with the name “Easter” itself, picked up from a fertility cult especially popular in medieval Germanic lands but also quite ancient.

Christian leaders showed creativity in the cultural absorption process, and I like the image of the church being able to appreciate and use common goods and worldly symbols. That says something about the universal nature of God’s grace; after all, the water of baptism and the bread and drink of Holy Communion are common elements of life. The eggs and bunnies of Easter were interpreted in Christian circles as representing new life, rebirth, resurrection. Okay, I can accept that, to some degree, a limited degree, but I wonder whether live baby chicks colored green or baskets of red eggs and marshmallow-filed chocolate rabbits serve much gospel purpose in 2007.

No, I think there are better symbols of Christian new life than chicks and bunnies; better than lilies, dogwood, and tulips, as beautiful as those are. I am thinking more of life renewed by the power of God’s love, that same love that triumphed over death on the cross, a love that cannot be killed by any human force.

I am thinking about the more abundant life of the spirit that comes through our new congregations in Mongolia, Cameroon, Honduras, and El Paso; about the lives given futures by anti-malaria ministries; about talents assisted to flower through educational programs and scholarships; about the renewed prospects that come to towns in Sumatra and Mississippi after natural disasters; about the lives sustained and nourished by refugee and agriculture ministries in Sudan. I am thinking about movement from the shadows of darkness into God’s dawn, a light that not even the darkness of death can extinguish.

The culture at large will retain the Easter of bunnies delivering eggs, but can we shift the emphasis among ourselves, church members? Can we:

+Give a gift to feed a hungry child each time we eat a chocolate,
+Donate to foster agriculture in a poor country whenever we see a baby chick,
+Re-use last year's Easter basket as an offering plate for starting a new congregation,
+Buy a lily and make a pledge to support a missionary, and
+Dye an egg and visit the lonely and the homeless?

We have a vigorous faith—strong, resolute, and life-giving. Can we lay aside the soft and sentimental nature symbols of Easter, symbols we barely understand, in favor of vital Christian hope and the promise of life renewed by God’s vibrant love?

I think we can; I think we must. We can because we are not alone on the road that leads onward from Holy Week, the road that moves into the world from the Sunday of Resurrection. Jesus is with us, as he was with disciples on the walk from Jerusalem to the town of Emmaus, and Jesus will be with us wherever our roads go. We must because we have a task, one handed to the church following Resurrection Day:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them…and, remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age. Matthew 28:19a, 20b

Peace and grace,

R. Randy DayGeneral SecretaryGeneral Board of Global Ministries