every day a feast day

In the Christian tradition, there are forty days of lent leading up to Easter. The requirement is that each year during this time, believers are, to a certain degree, to refrain from eating, drinking and/or enjoying other pleasures. And then is the Easter feast – for one day. Well, it is  commercialism that has another day attached to it, but that is it. It is fair to say that Scripture does not know a ‘church calendar’. This calendar dates from the fourth century, created during church meetings at Nicaea, with the aim to avoid having its high days coincide with “the feasts of Yahweh”, as described in Leviticus 23. This reason, may in itself already be called significant, but what to make of the relationship between fasting forty days versus one day of celebration? Is that not a disproportionate reversal? Did Jesus not precisely endure the time of the cross, because of the lasting glory that it would yield (Heb.12:2)? Was He not one time delivered to a curse, so that the blessing for all times would be upon all mankind (Rom.5:18)? Did He not once die the hostile crucifixion-death in order to permanently reconcile all of creation (Col.1:20)? Paul writes in Romans 6: 9.10 that Christ died for Sin, once, for all time, yet in that He is living, He is living to God, never to die again. With as a logical consequence for those who believe:

Thus you also, be reckoning yourselves to be dead, indeed, to Sin, yet living to God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. -Romans 6:11-

All around us and in ourselves, we, most likely, see and feel the effects of sin and death, daily. But faith is not based on what is, here and now, seen and felt. Faith is based on what God has done and spoken; on what counts for Him. Well then, the stone is rolled away from the tomb. Definitively. The old has passed by and the new has come, in Christ Jesus (2Cor.5:17). With that we reckon. “So let us celebrate the feast…” (1Cor.5:8). “That we may be adorning the teaching that is of God, our Saviour, in all things. For the saving grace of God has made its advent to all humanity… “(Tit.2:10,11). Indeed, almost no one knows this. This is not really strange, as precisely the authority which is to promote the reputation of the evangel, emphatically, does not believe this and condemns it. Traditionally, during these days, eggs are hidden in the garden to be found by children. Remarkable! The egg as emblem of new life … hidden … in the garden (the garden of Arimathea >). Not the theological “wise and prudent” search for them, but playful children do (Matt.11:25). That is the Good News Message: in “the last Adam” God guarantees to all people, life and justification (Rom.5:18; 1Cor. 15:22,45). Yes, all of mankind!!!!

Delen: