Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia!

What an awesome celebration we had this weekend! You know, even though we joke about attendance swelling with folks who don’t’ regularly attend church, they get kind of a bad rap, but hey, at least they aren’t missing the most important celebration of the Church Year. Easter is the event to which the entire church year revolves. It is powerful. You can understand why even when someone has fallen away from attending church, they will come for these special services, even if it is at the behest of a well-intended parent. Easter, even if it is the only Sunday you attend, is so important BECAUSE we always need to hear that sin, death, and evil is not the last word. The last word is hope. It is Christ. It is always worth coming back to hear.

As we delve into the mystery of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, I remember my favorite class in seminary: Preaching the Pascha. In it, we read my professors not-yet published book to discover the ancient traditions that had evolved into our practice today. It was fascinating! It is clear that we step into something far greater than just another church holiday. We enter into Pascha—an ancient, holy celebration bursting with history, wrapped in mystery, and overflowing with power.

The word Pascha comes from the Hebrew word Pesach, meaning Passover. The early church used this term to connect Jesus' death and resurrection to Israel’s deliverance from Egypt. We emphasize this connection in our First Communion Stepping Stone. Just as the blood of the lamb on the doorposts spared the Israelites from death and led them into freedom, so too the blood of Christ—the Lamb of God—rescues us from sin and death and leads us into eternal life.

From the earliest days of Christianity, Pascha was the heart of the Christian year. Long before Christmas had a place on the calendar, the Church gathered on this holy night to remember and rejoice. During the Lenten season, new converts would be brought into the Church and undergo catechetical training during Lent until they were able to confess their faith with the Apostles’ Creed and get baptized. They started out facing the East and turned to face the West, turning literally and symbolically from darkness to light. This happened at night as Christians kept vigil, heard the great stories of salvation, baptized new believers, and greeted the sunrise with shouts of “Christ is risen!”

We are standing in a tradition that stretches back nearly two thousand years—rooted in Scripture, sustained through persecution, and celebrated across centuries and continents.

Yet Pascha is more than just historical—it is mysterious. Not mysterious as in confusing, but mysterious as in sacred and deep, full of divine wonder.

What happened in that tomb defies logic and breaks all the rules of the natural world. Jesus, fully dead, is made fully alive. He is not merely revived but glorified. His resurrection isn’t a reversal of death; it is death’s undoing.

The Pascha mystery isn’t just that Jesus came back to life, but that He is life. And through faith in Him, we are brought into that same life. Paul calls this a “mystery hidden for ages but now revealed” (Colossians 1:26)—a mystery that changes everything. All of this brings so many wonder-full questions about the power of God in Christ for later, but also here and now.

This is why Pascha isn’t just about what happened so long ago, but also about right now. It is true that the resurrection of Jesus Christ happened once in history, but as Christ lives in us, that power is in us today. Christ is risen—and present in hearts, in churches, in moments of despair turned to hope, in every baptism and communion, in every act of love in His name. In Christ, we are risen too. Thanks be to God.