When is Easter?

 

Bible reading:  Exodus 11: verses 7, 13 & 14.

“...take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses... The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live; and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. Now this day will be a memorial to you, and you shall celebrate it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations... as a permanent ordinance.”

When is Easter? I'm not asking what day it is this year, but rather how do we calculate the day of Easter each year. It's always on Sunday, but which Sunday? just as one might ask on which Thursday in the fall do we celebrate Thanksgiving, and the answer would be the fourth Thursday in November. We know Easter is in the spring each year, but how do we compute the precise date for Easter each year? Probably not one in ten Christians can tell you precisely. Well, here you go: Easter occurs on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. Can you repeat that without looking? Probably not! So how was this date for Easter chosen in the first place? The reasons might surprise you.

Most Christians are familiar with the idea that Jesus is our Passover Lamb. The apostle Paul wrote in I Cor. 5:7, "...for Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed." So it is no accident of history that when Jesus died it was exactly at the time of the Jewish Feast of Passover. John’s gospel records that the supper known to Christians everywhere as the Last Supper was a Passover celebration between Jesus and his disciples. Like all good Jews, they were celebrating the special feast described in Exodus when God rescued His people from the 10th plague, the plague of death, the final and worst plague on Egypt. Moses had instructed the people to slaughter a lamb, put the lamb’s blood on their doorposts and then, and only then, would God “pass over” their household and not kill the first born son within. Thus, the Feast of Passover was born and the Jews had been celebrating it for about 1500 years when Jesus came along. According to the tradition of that day, the lamb would have been slain in the afternoon and the Passover Supper eaten that evening. Jesus ate this special feast with his disciples, and then according to John’s gospel, the very next day Jesus was slain. Perfect timing for God’s point to be driven home, for when we believe on Jesus, He becomes our Passover Lamb. We are putting His blood on the doorposts of our heart and the judgment of God, which is death, “passes over” us as well. Jesus is the literal fulfillment of the symbolic feast.

The Jewish vs. the Gentile Calendar

So, the celebration of Jesus’ death and resurrection centuries later is still at the time of the Jewish Passover, right? Well, some say it should be, but, no, it’s not, and here’s what happened. At first, the early Christian community consisted primarily of Jews. Every year when they celebrated Passover, they rejoiced in its perfect fulfillment in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. But it wasn’t long before Gentile Christians outnumbered the Jewish ones. Three centuries had gone by since Jesus’ death when the Christian community (still under the Roman empire) wanted to set a specific date for commemorating  Jesus’ death and resurrection. To the Jewish Christians it only seemed natural to celebrate the death of the Lamb of God at the exact time when the Passover Lamb was slaughtered. And, after all, that was the actual anniversary of when the events had taken place. However, the Gentile Christians (“Gentile” is just basically everyone who is not Jewish) had a problem. They hated the Jewish calendar. Trying to figure out when Passover would be each year seemed hard to them. (They could have just asked the Jews, couldn’t they?!) They were using the “Julian” calendar which Julius Caesar had invented. They liked things the way they’d always done them (don’t we all), and they were not going to change for the Jewish believers who were now a minority group in the church. So they said, “Lets base the date for his death and resurrection on something we are familiar with. How about the Spring Fest celebration for  fruitful crops and fertility?” Spring, fertility, resurrection – that all goes together, doesn’t it? So, that’s the date they settled on. Then, a few centuries after that, when the English people were converted to Christianity, they adapted the name of their goddess Eostre, goddess of fertility, to the whole celebration. Her symbol was-- guess what? The rabbit. And thus, we have the Easter Bunny! So that’s where we get rabbits, eggs (for fertility), and the term "Easter," a very slight change from the name of Eostre.

And what a great God we have! He took a totally heathen celebration and transformed it. No one remembers the old goddess Eostre, and Easter is celebrated the world over for our Savior’s resurrection. It is proclaimed amid joyful symbols of renewed life, the return of Spring, and of everything which is new, and fresh, and green.

But what about Passover? We should – we need - to remember the original connection of Jesus’ death with the Jewish Feast of Passover, especially since God worked a miracle in history by placing Jesus’ death exactly at the time of the killing of the Passover lamb. Only the Creator of history itself could have orchestrated that coincidence with such precise and purposeful timing. Today, more and more churches incorporate a Passover seder in with their Easter celebrations. One that I attended a year ago was hosted by a rabbi who was a Christian believer. He explained the symbols of the food eaten at the feast and how they, too, point to Christ. It is good to be led by Jewish believers to incorporate these important symbols into our own ancient celebrations of the Resurrection.

So Christ is indeed our Passover Lamb and also the beginning of Spring and renewed life. Both Feast and Festival mark ancient traditions of faith reminding us that Christ is Lord of all. And, last of all, we can have a good laugh for, just think, all those early Gentile Christians thought that the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring equinox would be easy to remember! 

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© Laurie J. White