As I prepared for Easter Sunday I remembered something I heard Arsene Wenger (the manager of Arsenal footballl club) say in an interview. He said, "Christmas is significant, Easter is decisive. "He was, of course, talking about winning the Premiership, but what a good statement about our faith too.
Christmas is significant. At Christmas we celebrate an amazing event in history. God came into the world as a human baby. No sudden arrival fully grown-up, or heavenly appearance, just a natural birth into a normal world. So normal, hardly anyone noticed. The only visitors where a group of shepherds who'd been told what was going on, and much later a mysterious group of travellers from the east.
Yes, Christmas is significant. But Easter is decisive.
Easter changes everything. The birth of Jesus initiated a sequence of events that met their fulfilment in the cross of Jesus Christ and the empty tomb three days later. His death changed everything. As Max Lucado says, there are important events in history--—the turning of the first wheel etc. But when it comes to redefining history nothing compares to the cross.
Without the events of Easter there would be no Christian faith, no Christian hope no possibility of forgiveness. Bu tbecause of the cross God has once and for all decisively rewritten history.
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