What is Easter all about?

The story of Easter unfolds in a room that had been hurriedly booked.  If you where a fly on the wall on that day, what you would see is thirteen friends gathered together for an evening meal.  Just picture the get together, where someone mentions what should remain unsaid. The dreadful ripple of disquiet spreads, and the tone of the party is ruined forever! Someone has disturbed the old wounds, it is not going to be a quiet evening.  Jesus is the one whose words are to spoil the evening. He announces that he knows that one of the twelve people  he has trusted is about to stab him in the back!  There is hurt embarrassment and denial in the nest. No more friendly back slapping.  No more eating too much and crashing out on the couch.  All eyes are wide open now, appetites have vanished.  Jesus further underlines that death is in the offing with a symbolic act known as The Last Supper Mark 14:23 "He took a cup of grape juice, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them and they drank it.  And he said this is my blood which ratifies the new covenant which is being poured out on many".  The spectacle of death is now clearly fixed in each persons
 mind.  This is how the Bible announces the coming crucifixion which is at the centre of the season we call Easter.

Strangely the events of that evening where not hurried, unforeseen or unexpected.  Seven hundred and fifty years earlier a prophet named Isaiah predicted:

 “…He (Jesus) was despised rejected of men, a man of sorrows and pains and acquainted with grief and sickness, and like One from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we did not appreciate his worth or have any esteem for him.” Isaiah 53:3. 

In Acts 2:23 Luke the Doctor puts a finer point on it:

“This Jesus was delivered up according to the definite and fixed purpose and settled plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and put out of the way (killing him) by the hands of lawless men…”.   

In other words the betrayal and ultimate crucifixion of Christ was part of Gods foreknowledge and plan, but men had their individual roles to play in its outworking.  Jesus shows a clear understanding of himself in   Matthew 20:17

“And as he was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve disciples aside along the way and said to them.  Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man (Jesus) will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes; and they will sentence Him to death”

Later in Matthew 20:28 Jesus reveals that he is on a mission:

“…just as the Son of Man came not to be waited on but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom  for many.

The Easter message is that Jesus Christ came to give his life for many.  That word many refers to everyone that has ever lived and will live in the future.  By dying for many the Bible says in Isaiah 53:4

Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken, smitten and afflicted by God.

New Testament Church of God (Handsworth)
244 Lozells Road
Handsworth
Birmingham
B19 1NP
0121 554 1358
www.ntcg-handsworth.org.uk/