The church that meets at Rivanna River

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Greetings!   

Welcome from His church at Rivanna River (North Fork)!  Isn’t spring such a great time of year?  It is with great fanfare and jubilation that many of us warmly embrace the flora and fauna of Spring.  With new life exploding about us, is it no wonder we celebrate Easter in the Spring?  I know.  Easter has come and gone.  But it is pertinent to God’s kingdom and, consequently, important to His children.  And it has everything to do with new beginnings … for His church here in Charlottesville, around the corner, and around the globe. Setting aside pagan worship, the ecclesiastical vernal Equinox, and, too, the Earth ‘s regeneration in the form of bloom and blossom, Spring’s return ignites an appreciation for God’s splendor.  But for all of Spring’s glory, why celebrate Easter at all?  Do we need an excuse to rejoice in greener pastures among fragrant flowers?  Can one find hope in talk of bunnies and eggs, baskets and ducklings, flowers, colored grass, new bonnets and shoes, beans of jelly, and marshmallow too?  Oh, one might say.  It is not the trivial we celebrate at Easter; instead, Jesus is the reason for the season.  I could not agree more.  Context, however, is the picture of a thousand words.  You see, our Easter celebration has evolved as a natural extension of the day of unleavened bread at the feast of the Jewish Passover.  The Passover, you may recall, was not about pretty flowers, fragrant breezes, baby animals, or new life.  Indeed, the Passover had everything to do with death—much death and destruction.  Long before Jesus arrived on the scene, God’s people were under bondage.  The Passover represented the culminating point of submission for the Pharaoh.  It was the outward expression of God’s faithfulness to deliver His people by a mighty hand and outstretched arm. From the Passover came the great outpouring of God’s people in their exodus from Egypt.  The events of the Passover story have been told and retold—the haggadah—for thousands of years.  The story speaks of miraculous transformations and transitions in the cycle of life — from slavery to freedom, from despair to hope, from weeping to joy, and from darkness to light. The message of Passover binds all who would seek Him to the eternal truth that can set all people free.  The message of Easter—a time to peer through the stained glass window of life—is much the same.  Jesus died for us, and His death on that Cross on a hill in a far-away land, though tragic and untimely in human terms, opens a door to Life abundant—a door that continues to set all people free.  May I offer, however, that His dying was not unlike the dying of thousands of others at the time—a cruel death of agony on a cross.  But is it Jesus’ death that Christians are to celebrate each first day of the week as we commune with Him?  Never—it is His life we celebrate!  Our freedom, our hope, our joy, and our light, you see, radiate from a broken seal, a stone rolled away, and a tomb.  And it is the open door of that tomb—an empty tomb!—that bids us to come unto Him.  For who, after seeking and knocking, comes unto One who is dead?  Alas, it is He who lives, and the Life that only our Christ can offer, that we seek.