What day is this?
Amitiyah Elayne Hyman
April 11, 2004 (Easter Sunday)
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday,...
Lundi, Mardi, Mercredi, Wodensday, Thorsday, Saturnsday...Sun's day.
The day of the Sun ... Ancient people worshiped the sun. They knew it was important for their survival here on earth. Other days were named for planets too, for gods ... it depends on the people who did the naming. Romans called one "dies maratis" after the god of War. Mars was the same as TIW's day > TYR > TIR ... the God of Honorable War, it's metal iron. Another was called Lundi by the french after the Goddess Luna, Moon goddess, whose metal was silver. "Dies Solis" the day of the Sun, the center of the solar system, worshiped from pre-historic times to the close of the 5th century. There were many names for the Sun gods, Ra, Helios, Apollo, Phoebe...
In 323 the Roman Emperer, Constantine, declared that this Sun's day should be a day of rest, the 7th day, corresponding with the biblical account, became the 1st day of the week. Monday was the second day, Tiw'sday the third. In Hebrew the days were numbered, not named, simply 1,2,3,4,5,6, only the 7th day, was called Sabat ... a day of rest. In Arabic the days were also numbered and the 7th call "assabt", the day of gathering, in Greek it bacame the Lord's Day, "sawato kyriake." And so it went.
West African Ghanians name their children after the day upon which they were born ... Kwabene, Kwame, Kofi. All the great civilizations had their name of this day of the Sun.
Easter began as a festival of springtime, an occasion for commemorating life and birth among northern ancient Saxon tribes. Early Christians took a little while but in time succeeded in converting the pagan holiday into the religious one, celebrating not only life and birth, but the new life, and rebirth of the one they called the Christ. Hence Easter was celebrated on many days of the week, including Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Great Constantine established the Easter Rule, which states that Easter shall be celebrated on the first Sunday that occurs after the first full moon or after the vernal/spring equinox, always March 21st. To those who took notice, last week we saw the moon in all its fullness on moon's day...Monday.
What day is this? It is the first Sunday, after the full moon and the spring equinox. It is also the day, our psalmist says, which the Lord God has made. It is a day, this day, the day for gladness and rejoicing.
What day is this? Evening and morning, a segment of time into which God enters our lives. This day is a human formulation with sunrise and sunset. For God, the bible tells us, there is no night, for God neither slumbers nor sleeps. For God day runs into day. God is busy when we sleep, God is awake creating a new day. What day is this ... this is the day which the Lord God has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. But according to the papers it's a day when more US troops kill and die in Iraq, when decay and destruction ooze through the ozone and our planet loses yet more, irreplaceable species. This is a day of mourning.
According to Luke this is the day, the third day, after that horrific Friday, when Mary and the others visited the tomb, at dawn, with spices, expecting to prepare Jesus' battered body for burial. They didn't come seeking revenge for the murder of their teacher, they bore no stones in their garments to villify the villains, to terrorize the terrorists, they came quietly to bury their loved one, a man, like other men, who had died an awful death.
Two weeks ago this day, another thirty-something young man died in Atlanta. His family and friends have been pestering the police for clues. His body was found, beaten beyond recognition in a parking lot outside his office where he had been working well into the night. He was much loved by many in his adopted country. A Stanford graduate, who worked in two great cities, Chicago and Atlanta, he was uncle to many, friend of more, the honorable son of a vast Nigerian clan. Gentle, good humored, wise beyond his years, polite, enterprising, up-and-coming, the victim of senseless violence, in a Southern city that long ago stopped lynching young black men. His friends gathered to grieve last week as they saw his battered form laying lifeless in the casket. Grown men clutched their wives, children wept, friend shuddered and shook with sobs and moans too deep for hearing. In the days which have followed they did not rejoice. Some of them, frightened out of their wits, are buying guns, arming themselves against another day's violence, another senseless beating, another home invasion, another random act of brutality, a personal wake-up call, another 911.
Would that they knew of the man Jesus, of his suffering and his friends. Should they know of this man, they would hear the story of this day, when his friends cam upon, not a satin lined casket, but an empty tomb, the stone had been rolled away, the body gone.
Gone in a day. A morning and an evening. A segment of time, a human formulation. Gone without a trace, from Friday's horror, to Sun's day's surprise. There is no need for weeping here, nor the cries of distress. At the tomb, God had neither slumbered nor slept, for God there was only one day ... one running into another, colliding in the cosmos. On this day the wolf and lamb feed together, terrorized and terrorist make peace, villain and victim are made one.
On this day God overcomes evil with good. Light overpowers darkness, hope overcomes despair, love conquers hate. On this day ... this SON's day, Jesus, the SON OF GOD is resurrected, arisen. It is miraculous. Our modern minds recoil. How can it be? Poof, presto, vanished, into thin air. We want hard evidence, assurances, reasonable explanations. The bible gives us none. Even Mel Gibson's movie doesn't explain it to our satisfaction. For this is a day when the claims of faith, leap to the forefront. On this day, those who believe are asked to stand up and be counted. On this day the call is for proclamation... No, it is not just springtime, not simply the first Sunday after the spring equinox. Something much bigger, more profound, more radical is going on here. This is the day when we people of faith say GOD HAS DONE SOMETHING SPECIAL, unique, unheard of before or after in human history. For without this day there would be no church, no need to remember Jesus, or any of his friends. Without this day we would all be tempted to by guns, to kill, rather than be killed, without this day we are left to out own devices, our own human capacity to hunt or be hunted, to hurt and to destroy. Without this day the poisonous energies will ooze into the atmosphere destroying our habitat and our lives. Without this day we are hopeless and the best that can be expected of us is to gather and to grieve.
But this is a day of celebration, of hope, of unbound joy. Our God is a mighty God, great and greatly to be praised. Our God is miracle working God, a help in times of trouble, our God can raise the dead to new life. Our God, Jesus father, ABBA, Daddy, comes on like gang busters today. On this day God pulls it out of the hat. On this day the tomb is empty, death is swallowed up in victory.
ALLELUIA!
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