Our church celebrated Easter Sunday yesterday.  Yours probably did as well.  (The Orthodox churches will hold their Easter on April 27 this year.)  The next time Easter will come on March 23 will be 220 years from now.  I'll be 269 years old by then, and probably not preaching the morning sermon.

 

Why does Easter move around as it does?  Christmas is a nicely predictable holiday.  You obviously know when the Fourth of July is on the calendar.  Why doesn't Easter behave like other holidays?  To keep the date as close to the first Easter as possible.  Within two centuries of the resurrection of Jesus, the Church was debating various methods for calendaring the holiday.  As you know, Easter Sunday followed immediately after the Jewish Passover.  The Passover was always observed on a full moon, occurring on the 14th day of the month Nisan.  The problem is that the Jewish people observed a lunar calendar.  Aligning the Julian or Gregorian calendars with theirs is a difficult task at best.

 

The eventual solution was to celebrate Easter on the first Sunday after the first full moon (Passover) after the Spring Equinox (March 20).  The earliest date for Easter would therefore be March 22; we observed the second-earliest yesterday.  And will do so again in the year 2228.  Make your pew reservations today.

 

You may have been alive the last time Easter was this early, if you're 95 years old and were born before March 23, 1913.  If you claim to have been around for the last earliest Easter (March 22), you'd have to have been born in 1818.  Such an Easter will come again in 2285, 277 years from now.  Is that all clear?

 

It's easy to wonder when Easter will come again (it will fall on April 12 next year in the West, April 19 for Orthodox churches).  It's even easier to wonder when the risen Christ will come again in person.  Such was the apostles' question in the days following the resurrection: "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6).  His reply: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority" (v. 7).  This is a fact I wish every future-predicting preacher would remember.

 

Here's what matters: "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (v. 8).  That "power" came when the Spirit fell at Pentecost and the Easter faith of the disciples became the mightiest movement in spiritual history.  How did it all happen?  How can it happen today?  Let's address these questions, beginning tomorrow.

 

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