Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church

Easter is not in the Bible.  The resurrection of Jesus on the third day after the Jewish Passover is in the Bible. But nowhere will you find the word Easter.  Why?  Because the word “Easter” actually comes from an ancient pagan spring fertility holiday.  It comes from the spring fertility goddess Eostra which is the same root for the female fertility hormone estrogen.  So how did Christians start calling this holiday Easter?

This weekend, as we celebrate Easter, we are beginning a series of messages on the relationship of Christ and Culture.  We want to explore how Christians relate to the culture around them.  Unfortunately, surveys show that more and more people perceive Christians primarily as against things.  Christians are perceived as against Hollywood, against TV, against popular music, against… well, the culture in general. 

How did Christians get this reputation?  To be honest, much of it is deserved.  Christians too often have been better at describing what they are against and not so good at announcing what they are for.  This weekend, as we gather to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, let’s explore how followers of Jesus as the risen Lord can engage in the culture in more helpful, positive ways.  In coming weeks some of the sermons are titled, “Jesus and Hollywood,” and “Jesus and Reality TV.”   Let’s look at positive ways that Christ connects with culture.

Read Luke 24:1-5.

The preacher was hiding Easter eggs indoors for his children when he discovered a secret box with four Easter eggs under his wife’s side of the bed.  The box had $200 along with the Easter eggs.  He asked his wife about them.  She seemed hesitant to talk about it.  When he pushed for more explanation, she explained that years ago she started boiling an egg and decorating it each time he preached a boring sermon.  The pastor felt hurt at first, but then put a positive spin on it.  “Hey, after all these years you only have four decorated eggs?  I can not be on top of my game every week.  So what’s with the $200?”  She responded, “When ever I get a dozen eggs I sell them.”

The church gathers on Easter Sunday to celebrate that the tomb is empty.  We boldly announce that Jesus is alive from the dead.  This weekend started with Good Friday when Jesus died on the cross for our sins.  Jesus was buried in a tomb.  Then on the third day, the women came to put spices on his dead body, instead they met him as the risen Lord.  Jesus’ victory over death is not just so we can live eternally and go to heaven.  Yes, that is an important part of what we believe.  But the really exciting part of Easter is that Jesus is alive today to help us figure out daily life here and now.

Jesus is victorious over death.  That means the followers of Jesus need no longer fear death.  Jesus alive from the dead is the announcement that his teachings and life are relevant to our daily lives here and now.  Followers of Jesus need not fear evil for Jesus has shown that good overcomes evil.  That is the basis for redeeming ancient pagan holiday traditions into Christian traditions.         

How did followers of Jesus transform the pagan holiday into a Christian celebration?  They learned from the example of Jesus’ life. One of the most radical things Jesus did was reverse the traditional religious purity rules of his day.  Up until Jesus; religious people in his culture believed that evil was more powerful than good.  Thus, they developed an entire set of rules to keep themselves from being tainted by evil.  They could not touch a leper.  They avoided contact with blood.  A religious person would even walk by an injured person to avoid becoming impure. 

Jesus reversed all this when he taught that good is stronger than evil.  He exemplified this by touching lepers and eating with sinners.  He taught his followers that God’s Spirit in us is stronger than the evil in the world.  Thus, followers of Jesus could boldly engage in the culture without fear of becoming tainted with sin.  Most of our Easter traditions, then, are the result of this approach.  Consider a couple of examples.

When the first Christians came to the Saxon culture they learned of a local tradition of sacrificing an ox as part of the spring fertility festival.  The Saxon buns had a cross on top representing the oxen horns.  The Christians had a choice. Do they preach against these buns as pagan and evil or redefine them for good?  They chose to use the cross on top of the buns to talk about Jesus sacrificing himself for our sins.  It worked.  What do we call them today?  Are they oxen horn buns?  No.  They are hot CROSS buns.  We use them to remind ourselves of the cross of Jesus who died for our sins.

Christians did the same thing with Easter eggs. Back in the days of the spring fertility rituals, the eggs were colored red.  Christians in the culture took the red eggs and turned it into a story.

According to a traditional Christian story, the man who helped carry Jesus’ cross was an egg merchant.  Simon of Cyrene, the name of the man in the Bible, held a basket of eggs that day as they nailed Jesus to the cross.  Some of the blood splattered on his eggs.  Thus the red eggs came to represent Jesus’ blood bringing us God’s forgiveness and new life.

Here is the underlying principle for this approach to culture.  All truth comes from God.  Wherever we find something that is true and good, we can celebrate it as coming from God no matter where we find it.  We can study psychology and sociology in order to find God’s truth.  We can appreciate the research of scientists as exploring god’s truth in the physical world.  All truth is God’s truth.

This does not mean that followers of Jesus blindly accept anything and everything in a culture.  Sometimes devoted followers of Jesus hold differing opinions about which parts of culture can be affirmed and which parts should be critiqued.  When we pray and ask the risen Jesus to guide us, we discover that he doesn’t offer us simple lists of does and don’ts.  He invites us into dialogue and thoughtful conversation.  Let me show you what I mean.

Years ago some of our pastors and church leaders had a lengthy debate over whether to include the Easter bunny with our community Easter egg hunt.  In previous years we had a pastor dressed up as an Easter bunny, standing out on the street waving traffic in and inviting the neighbors to our egg hunt.  But a new pastor asked how we saw the bunny connected with Easter.  We debated and discussed.  We opened our Bibles and prayed for ways to consider it.  End result?  We agreed to disagree. 

The cool thing is that we are not mindlessly accepting whatever is already in our culture.  Nor are we knee-jerk reacting against things.  Instead, we are in a dialogue with the living Jesus about what it means to engage our society.  We can pray and seek the mind of Jesus about how he would want our world to be. 

The risen Jesus cares about these things.  He invites us to engage thoughtfully and humbly with our culture.  Let’s spend these next few weeks exploring other areas of culture that often are seen as disconnects between Christ and culture. 

Jesus is risen from the dead!  That means way more than simply eternal life and going to heaven. It means good is stronger than evil.  We can overcome evil with good.