Easter Sunday

There is so much about Easter Sunday that escapes us the rest of the year. We normally seem to merely exist, even and especially in our faith. It is a common behavior that renews the very day after we celebrate the resurrection of the Son of Man every year. It becomes a motion we execute without thinking. An expected next step. A routine we barely notice, in which we immerse ourselves during our everyday lives - because, after all, we do live on this Earth, corrupted, banished from Eden, and cursed to wander and wonder for the rest of our natural lives. It is written.

" Then the Lord God said, “Now these human beings have become like one of us and have knowledge of what is good and what is bad.They must not be allowed to take fruit from the tree that gives life, eat it, and live forever.” So the Lord God sent them out of the Garden of Eden and made them cultivate the soil from which they had been formed.Then at the east side of the garden he put living creatures and a flaming sword which turned in all directions. This was to keep anyone from coming near the tree that gives life."

Genesis 3:22-24

When God set His holy plan in motion, Easter Sunday was a main event. It however took generations upon generations to get to that cross, and to the excruciating Good Friday that preceded the absolute silence of Saturday, and the risen King on Sunday. This was no accident. God was training His people. Unfortunately, we are slow learners. The people of Israel took forty years to get to the promised land, wandering in that desert just a few days of travel away from the land of milk and honey for years, because even after they saw with their own eyes the power of God, they still doubted and complained and protested. And God was angry.

"The Israelites had moved about in the wilderness forty years until all the men who were of military age when they left Egypt had died, since they had not obeyed the LORD. For the LORD had sworn to them that they would not see the land he had solemnly promised their ancestors to give us, a land flowing with milk and honey."

Joshua 5:6

It was a holy anger, one born in His love for us, in a willingness to open our eyes to His power, and close our mouths to all questioning of His plan. He did what He had to do, to eradicate the resistance to His plan, and ensure a clean slate. The plan continued. For generations our biblical imperfections - the flesh, with its sensory certainty and its selfish nature - ruled the believers' environments and decisions, and God continued to move over the land and place people in the situations they needed to be, so that the birth of His son would take place just as He envisioned. And it did.

Yeshua - Jesus for gentiles - lived among God's people for thirty years, in which not only He trained Himself with the knowledge of Scripture of the Torah, but He also had the opportunity to speak and debate with rabbis, have meals with his neighbors, and experience friendship and love on the Earth. He was a baby, and a toddler, and a child, and a teenager, and an adult, present each day, in human flesh. And during that entire time, the Son of God was focused and knowledgeable of the mission that had been entrusted to Him. He represented the obedience the rest of us lacked - knowing as He did that God is sovereign and invincible. Yeshua was offered as a sacrifice even though those He would die for were never going to be blameless. God turned His back on His dying son, and Yeshua gave up His spirit not because He wanted to, but because He was told to. Sure, He loved us. But death hurt - He had learned that while living among us; He had cried tears of sorrow when His friend Lazarus died; He saw the despair in His friends Martha and Miryam; He had seen the pain in those begging Him for healing; Yeshua had empathized from a human perspective, even though He was supernatural in His linage. But when the time came and His sacrifice had to develop just as God had planned, He pleaded, and He cried tears of blood, and He asked for that cup to be removed from Him. And yet...

"Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done."

Luke 22:42

Obedience set the pace. God's will was done. Yeshua gave up His spirit, and the Heavens darkened, the Earth shook, Jerusalem's temple's curtain, that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple, was torn from top to bottom - as if God Himself was tearing His garments, in representation of the tear in His heart for the loss of a loved one, God's own holy Kriah. That curtain also represented a physical barrier between God and His people, only to be trespassed once a year by a high priest, to offer atonement for the sins of human beings. Once God's ultimate sacrifice had been offered, the tearing of that heavy veil was inevitable - as was God's grief for the loss of His son, with whom He was well pleased, and whom He loved.

"And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased." "

Matthew 3:17

Imagine the sorrow, even when there is a plan in place. God still saw Yeshua beg on that cross, and suffer, and drown in his lungs' fluids. Even in those moments, Yeshua was given a choice - to either let death take His life, or to voluntarily surrender it. Scriptures say that He gave up His Spirit.

"When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit."

John 19:30

"And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit."

Matthew 27:50

Friday became silent. The Shabbat was getting ready to start in a few hours, at sundown, and God's Son had stopped breathing. According to halakha (the Jewish religious law), Shabbat is observed from a few minutes before sunset, on Friday evening, until the appearance of three stars in the sky on Saturday night. There were three crosses on Golgotha's top that day, outside Jerusalem's walls, where Yeshua was crucified. Three stars would mark the end of Shabbat the next evening, and Yeshua would rise in the morning, on Sunday. It was perhaps not a coincidence.

We live in a time when believing in rolling stones and resurrected sons of God would seem nearly impossible. We have become more practical, more scientific, more technological. Who has time to believe in ancient stories, many ask. However, I like to think that the overwhelming evidence of the presence of evil in this Earth begs for the absolute existence of faith. To me, this is mostly represented by Easter Sunday. The day in which Yeshua beat the devil to the ground and came back to tell us about it. The day when death was not only defeated but eradicated from the lives of those who believe. When death had to leave the building, fear followed. Love - not just of God for us, but of Yeshua for His Father, that prompted Him to stay on course and suffer for us - has the victory, now and forever, all because of that day before Shabbat in which a Jewish man, a carpenter's son, fully man and fully God, protected His Father's plan and gave up His spirit. He had to fall to rise. He had to die to come back to life. He had to defeat the devil in the devil's playground, to establish control of God's playground forever.

This is what took me the longest to understand. The why of His death. My human empathy rebelling against the sadness that overcomes any of our hearts when death enters the room. But without death, there was no life. Without death, the devil would continue to haunt us and remind us of Eve's foolishness and Adam's disobedience, in a perpetual guilt trip. Guilt is over now. Yeshua took it and buried it in the dry dirt of Golgotha. His resurrection also resurrected our dry bones, and our armies rose to defeat the enemy forevermore.

"The hand of the Lord came upon me and brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley; and it was full of bones. Then He caused me to pass by them all around, and behold, there were very many in the open valley; and indeed they were very dry.  And He said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”

So I answered, “O Lord God, You know.”

Again He said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, ‘O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! Thus says the Lord God to these bones: “Surely I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live. I will put sinews on you and bring flesh upon you, cover you with skin and put breath in you; and you shall live. Then you shall know that I am the Lord.”

So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and suddenly a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to bone. Indeed, as I looked, the sinews and the flesh came upon them, and the skin covered them over; but there was no breath in them.

 Also He said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.” So I prophesied as He commanded me, and breath came into them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet, an exceedingly great army.

Then He said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They indeed say, ‘Our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off!’ Therefore prophesy and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “Behold, O My people, I will open your graves and cause you to come up from your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. Then you shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, O My people, and brought you up from your graves. I will put My Spirit in you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken it and performed it,” says the Lord.’ "

Ezekiel 37:1-14

He is risen.