Easter Sunday – Checked off the list

Matthew 28:28 -30 Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

Ok, you made it to church for the supposed requirement to be in church on Easter Sunday. That is what all good people do, right? I mean, no matter where we are in our supposed Christian life, we are to be in church yesterday, right? If we have said a prayer, signed a card, or made any commitment at any point in our life, it has to be a law somewhere to be in church on Easter Sunday? Isn’t that in the Ten Commandments? Wasn’t it a rule for the Jews in the Bible? Isn’t it a duty of mine to show up at least once or twice a year to confirm before God and everybody else that I am still a Christian? Isn’t it a rule of some kind either spoken or unspoken? Didn’t, well, don’t people still, get in trouble for breaking the rules? Isn’t Christianity based on a rulebook called the Bible? Isn’t Christianity all about the do’s and the don’t do’s? What if I don’t follow the rules? Will I get to heaven?

That was the question that every Jew asked themselves; will I get to heaven if I don’t follow the rules. That is still the question that haunts Christianity in an underlying tone today. Let me put it this way. If getting to heaven is about following the rules, you are getting to heaven on your own accomplishments, and Jesus died on the Cross for nothing. It was a waste of God’s time, and God’s Son’s life, if you believe following the rules gets you into heaven. The Laws that God had given Moses had grown through religious leaders to a point of absurdity; it was impossible for anyone to fulfill them. God had given the Law to point to their need for a Savior, and Jesus came to fulfill it. Matthew 5:17 “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. Jesus completed the task, the requirement of a Holy God, that you can by no means ever accomplish. Without Jesus, you will never be good enough to get into heaven. Jesus was speaking in Matthew 28 to those Jews who felt the weight of the Law, felt the burden of trying to hard, and failing daily. He pled for them to come to him and find rest from the burden of religion. Religion kills, for it teaches self-accomplishment or failure. Jesus saves, for he fulfilled the Law which was impossible for you to do in the first place.

Once you realize that Jesus did what you cannot, their is the freedom he describes. You and I fail daily in the religion and moral laws of the land. We can plea for forgiveness, be thankful for his mercy, and pray for the strength to walk to the next day closer to Him learning from our mistakes. That growing relationship, every high and every low, grows into an abiding walk with Jesus. That Christian life sins less because they are closer to Christ. That Christian life grieves when they do sin, because they know they grieved the Holy Spirit living inside of them. There is no burden of law, but joy found daily in that cultivating relationship with the One who died for them. Easter Sunday just became an opportunity to celebrate the anniversary, instead of the drudgery duty of religion.