From Fasting into Feasting

In varying ways and to varying degrees, many of us have recently observed the six-week cycle of Lent as a season of fasting and heart preparation in the run up to Holy Week and Good Friday. Fewer may be aware that in the liturgical calendar Easter is not a single Sunday but an even longer seven-week season of feasting in which Christ-followers all over the world celebrate King Jesus’ Resurrection. 

In a larger sense, of course, we understand that every week is Holy Week; every Sunday is Resurrection Day, as Christ’s triumph marks the pivot point of human history, inaugurating the new creation reality that will reach its full and final culmination on that great and glorious day when he appears again—and at last!—to make all things new. 

Don’t get me wrong or hear me saying what I’m not saying. I agree that it’s good and right to reflect on the grave and grievous nature of sin, such as Lent emphasizes. It strikes me, however, that devoting six weeks to Lent and one day to Easter reflects a troubling imbalance.

Could it be that we have developed what J.I. Packer calls a morbid fascination with our own brokenness, which hinders our ability to live in light of Christ’s victory over sin and death? Could it be that, for all our talk about free grace freely given, some part of us still wants to believe that we have some contribution to make? 

It’s true that Jesus tells us to take up our cross and follow, but he also says, come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. The fifty-day cycle of Eastertide calls us to shift the focus from fasting over our sin and crucifixion toward feasting on the righteousness and resurrection of Christ; it calls us into an embodied experience by which we come to feel as forgiven as we truly are in Christ; it calls us into deeper understanding that God doesn’t call us to do but to receive and to rest in what our Lord has done.