Resurrection changes everything.... This is why I need more than just Easter Day. If Easter were only a single day, I would never have time to let its incredible reality settle over me, settle into me. I would trudge through my life with a disconnect between what I say I believe about resurrection and how I live (or fail to live) my life in light of it.
Thanks be to God, our forebears in faith had people like me in mind when they decided that we simply cannot celebrate Easter in a single day, or even a single week. No, they decided, we need fifty days, seven Sundays, to even begin to plumb the depths of this event. Kimberlee C. Ireton
“The implications of the resurrection lavishly overflow a one-day container,” Mark Roberts notes in his winsome invitation to celebrate Eastertide, the fifty-day season to mark Christ’s resurrection which begins on Easter Sunday. We need the extra time to explore, savor, and grow into those amazing implications.
Eastertide is an ancient and widespread practice. In the first few centuries Christians marked special events that occurred between Christ’s resurrection and the formative events on Pentecost. Today Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrate the Easter season for 40 days, until the ascension of Jesus. Roman Catholics and many Protestants honor a 50 day Easter; their lectionaries provide special readings through the Seventh Sunday after Easter.
Joining with Christian believers in earlier centuries and across various traditions and using this time to draw on the rich resources of the church year are two good reasons to celebrate Easter for 50 days. But the most persuasive reason is that the implications of Christ’s resurrection deserve such extensive attention. “Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the God who raised Jesus from the dead deserves our attention,” he writes. “Moreover, we deserve to have our faith stretched, deepened, and renewed through a season of reflection upon and celebration of the resurrection of our Lord.”
In a time when so many of us feel powerless, it would be wonderful to rediscover the power of the resurrection. “Eastertide invites us to be creative, both in personal devotions and corporate worship,” Roberts concludes. It leads us to ask: “How can we worship God in light of the resurrection?” “How do we experience the reality of our own resurrection from death to life through the grace of God in Christ?” “How might we live for fifty days—and beyond—as resurrection people?”