There is a great amount of anticipation leading up to Easter Sunday. Easter has always been a springtime holiday. Coinciding with the Jewish celebration of Passover, where death gives way to life, the spring is a season of beginnings and of openings. What seemed “dead” in the natural world over the long, winter months now breaks forth with green buds of new life. The Easter season opens the door to verdant spring meadows, even as it closes the door behind on long, cold, dreary winters.

The historic Christian church laid out the liturgical calendar not only to coincide with the natural seasons of spring, summer, winter, and fall, but also to coincide with the events in the life and ministry of Jesus. The spiritual significance of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead—he is the firstborn of all creation—also finds expression in the cycles and seasons of the natural world. But the celebration of Easter is far more than a mirror for the natural world. The celebration of the resurrection of Jesus issues a call to reveal the continuing reality of the Risen Lord in the world. In many church traditions, Easter Sunday is simply the first day of the season of Eastertide, which lasts until Pentecost. It is an invitation to consider how the continuing presence of the Risen Lord is perceived by and made manifest in the world. It is a season that invites followers of Jesus to consider how and in what ways their action in the world bears witness to the reality of new life, of opening, of new beginning.

Yet, when we’re honest, many simply view Easter as an annual remembrance day of an event that happened long ago. Many of us do wonder what difference the resurrection has made in the practical realities of our lives and in this world. We still argue with our spouses and loved ones; we still have children who go their own way. We have difficulties at work or at school. We still see a world so broken by warfare, selfish greed, oppression and sin. Like the two pilgrims on the road to Emmaus recounting the events surrounding the death of Jesus, perhaps we wonder aloud at the things we might have hoped would happen. “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21a). Signs of redemption seem fleeting like the spring. Flowers fade and grass withers. Things seem pretty much as they were before Easter Sunday and the reality of our same, old, lives still clamor for redemption.

This is often the way of Easter if we have only understood resurrection as an event long past that only speaks to a future yet to come. This is the way of Easter if we do not connect Jesus’s prayer for God’s will to be done “on earth as it is in heaven” with the reality of the cry, “He is risen, as he said.” The glimpse into the kingdom of God that we receive in the life and ministry of Jesus is ratified through the resurrection. New creation, new life, resurrected living is now a possibility for all those who follow Jesus.

Easter is far more than a day to be remembered; it is a call to action. The risen Jesus told his followers, “As the Father has sent me, I also send you” (John 20:21). The resurrection of Jesus is not a promise for escape from the world, or a life free from trouble, but rather, it commissions those who would remember his resurrection to be his “raising” agents in the world. He sends us out with the extraordinary news that the dead can be raised to new life for death and evil do not have the last word! And as we begin to live in light of the resurrection, we can gain insight into its significance for the practical realities of everyday lives. As one New Testament commentator has concluded: “Jesus is raised, so he is the Messiah, and therefore he is the world’s true Lord; Jesus is raised, so God’s new creation has begun—and we, his followers, have a job to do! Jesus is raised, so we must act as his heralds, announcing his lordship to the entire world, making his kingdom come on earth as in heaven.”(1)

The spring season will give way to summer, just as summer will yield to fall and winter. Eastertide is far more than a season coinciding with the springtime. Eastertide is a call to see the Risen Lord in the world, and to make him seen as we act as agents of resurrection. We are sent out beyond Easter Sunday into a continuing Eastertide because everything has changed. As we live into and out of the resurrection, we can make manifest the continuing presence of the risen Lord in our lives and in this world.

Margaret Manning Shull is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Bellingham, Washington.

(1) N.T. Wright, Surprised By Hope (New York: Harper Collins, 2008), 56.

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