The celebration of the crucifixion and resurrection of
Jesus is not strictly a ceremony prescribed in the Bible as a command. The
closest thing to it spoken by our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the object of this
celebration, it is the memorial of the Holy Supper (Luke 22:19-20; 1Corinthians
11:24-26).
However, it is the first ‘church established’ celebration
ever to be kept by Christians since the second century (1). Christians
overwhelmed by the greatness of God’s grace poured over humanity, and specially
themselves, opted to relive the suffering of our Lord, his crucifixion and his
glorious resurrection, so much as to honour Him, as to pass on to further generations
the historical reality of this event, the greatest of human history.
Nevertheless, through history, this has been occasion to
many discrepancies than point of union among Christians.
At the beginning, Christians celebrated the passion of
Jesus according to the Jewish calculation of the Pascha, starting in the
evening of 14th to 15th of Nisan, regardless of the day
of the week it fell on. In fact, during the 2nd century, bishop and
martyr, Polycarp of Smyrna, had a disagreement with Roman bishop Anicetus over
this practice. Polycarp proclaimed that he had received this custom, and that
the Church in Asia minor always kept Easter according to the Jewish Passover,
while Anicetus with the western European roman provinces kept what would become
later the established practice of a fixed day of the resurrection on a Sunday,
which not always followed the Jewish Lunar calendar.
A similar case happened later between Roman bishop Victor
and Asian bishop Polycrates of Ephesus, where the western Church intended to
excommunicate the Eastern Church for following the 14th of Nisan. Happily,
bishop Irenaeus of Lyon mediated peace between the two parties.
These differences were increased later, after the first
council of Nicea in the year 325 CE, tried to settle this problem. It
prohibited to celebrate Easter following the Jewish calendar, thus demonstrating
the independence of Christianity from her Jewish roots. However, it did not
specify how the celebration should be calculated or gave a fixed date.
This increased even further, when Roman bishop Gregory XIII,
designed and proclaimed his own calendar as compulsory for all the Western
church, braking thus with 1500 years of a common universal Christian calendar,
making Easter to fall on a different date from the unanimous accepted date of
the Julian Calendar, the only one Christians have known until then, the year 1582
CE. and that the Eastern Church continued to keep.
Today, many scholars and Christians in general, discuss
and even disagree strongly over the exact day Jesus entered Jerusalem, when He
celebrated the Last Supper, and when and where exactly He was crucified and how
many days He was buried before his Resurrection.
And to throw even more wood to the fire, some marginal brethren,
consider this celebration as any other ‘Christian’ celebration, a pagan festival,
against God’s will, as it is not commanded in Scripture.
WHAT IS THE POINT OF ALL THIS.
However, if we let ourselves be involved into these
discussions, we have lost already the purpose of the death of Jesus altogether.
We have strained the mosquito but swallowed the camel.
The salvation that Jesus brought to humanity was not
based on the observation of days, or the following of calendars (Colossians
2:15-17).
It is true that neither Jesus or the Apostles proclaimed
any specific celebrations to be kept or compulsory for Christians; because salvation
had nothing to do with it, but with a conversion of heart, through faith in
Jesus, in his person and his teachings.
Jesus died to pay for the sins of all humanity, in order
than anyone who truly repents and accepts Him as Lord and Saviour, may be
forgiven and receive the Holy Spirit; and thus, become a Child of God, with the
promise of eternal salvation (John 3:16).
This regeneration happens because Jesus suffered and died
on the Cross for us regardless of the day or the time. Our salvation is totally
based on our Faith and Repentance based on his atonement, and not in the days
it happened. Without his death, the Jewish Passover would mean nothing to us,
and still would continue, without any significance.
Let not discussions of days or calendars take our
attention away from the spiritual value of the historical death and
resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, and instead, let us flock to the feet of
Jesus, wherever we are, to ask Him for forgiveness and surrender our lives to
Him, for our salvation.
“Salvation is found in no one else, for there
is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved."
Acts 4:12
(1)
Melito of Sardis. "Homily on the
Pascha" (180 CE)
Omar Flores.
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