Thursday, April 21, 2022

Easter - Ascension - Pentecost

 

Now that Resurrection Sunday has concluded, the average person probably thinks to the civic holidays of Summer (Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day) as the next highlights on the calendar, and Christmas as the next big religious event.  However, for the historic Church, the day that we English-speakers call Easter was really just the beginning of about 2 months of feasts and festivals remembering major events in the post-Resurrection life of Jesus and the birth of the Christian Church. 

 

We just began to celebrate the historic fact that after Jesus died on Friday afternoon, He rose to life again on Sunday morning, because Easter Sunday actually serves as merely the kick-off to an eight-week celebration of the Resurrection.  The 8 weeks represent the “8th Day” of the New Creation which is promised in Scripture and initiated in the resurrection of Jesus, and many of the readings for these Sundays show the events in which Jesus appeared to his disciples (Luke 24, John 20-21), other eyewitnesses, and even a crowd of hundreds (1 Corinthians 15)

40 days into this Easter season is the Feast of the Ascension, observing the day 40 days after the Resurrection when, while Jesus was talking with His disciples, Jesus began to be lifted up, and a cloud hid Him from the sight of the disciples.  Other New Testament passages speak of Jesus as presently being ascended into Heaven and that He is “seated at the right hand of God the Father…” as Christians confess in the Apostles’ Creed. 

 

Finally, on the 50th day after the Resurrection, the disciples appeared in Jerusalem, proclaiming the resurrected Christ as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophesy in a miraculous event where they were understood by pilgrims of numerous languages and homelands, marking the birth of Church by the Baptism of 3000 people, which is celebrated by Christians as Pentecost. 

 

Before Jesus died, He had promised His disciples that after He had risen, He would send the Holy Spirit to guide them and remind them of the things He had said (John 14-16), and just before He ascended, He again promised to send the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:8).  Through the Church, born on Pentecost, He fulfills these promises, which the rest of the New Testament urges us to seek out in the proclamation of Scripture, in Baptism, and in the Lord’s Supper, occurring in the gathering of other Christians, and through which the Holy Spirit causes people to trust in Jesus. 

Thanks be to God for this rich observance of our Lord’s resurrected life in the heritage of the Church, which we continue to receive, even nearly 20 centuries after the original events.