Given the faith proclaimed by mainstream American Christianity, it’s easy to disconnect Easter from the everyday. The basic message becomes, “Jesus died, Jesus lives, and you go to heaven when you die.”
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Then someone cautiously asks, “But what about today?”
What About Today?
At this point, some traditions talk about how you’re just going to sin today so keep confessing that sin and wait to die.
Others invite you to aim to be a good person as the culture broadly defines it. You know, be nice, give to charity, and that sort of thing.
Still, others aim to take over civil institutions and create a modern-day theocracy where they aim to take what they define as the moral components of Israel’s Law and implement them today.
But whatever route they take, they miss out on the everyday Easter offered in Psalm 67.
God’s Ways
In the second verse of the Psalm the poet writes, “May your ways be known throughout the earth, your saving power among people everywhere.”
The question then becomes, “What are God’s ways?”
In many ways, Psalm 67 echoes a harvest ritual laid out in Deuteronomy 26. Both highlight the act of praise that flows from the arrival of the harvest. If they do in fact link in Israel’s worship, then Deuteronomy 26 helps us understand what Psalm 67 means when it refers to God’s ways.
In Deuteronomy 26 an Israelite brings the first produce of the harvest to the priest and says, “With this gift I acknowledge to the Lord your God that I have entered the land he swore to our ancestors he would give us.” If we wanted to rephrase that for this post, we could very well say, “With this gift I acknowledge to the Lord your God that I have entered everyday Easter.”
After the priest places the basket of produce at the altar the farmer would continue by laying out the history of Israel from the Patriarch Jacob through the people’s slavery in Egypt to the Exodus when God brought them to the Promised Land. In other words, he would tell the story of Israel’s Easter. That is God’s way. God takes wandering and enslaved people and brings them to a place they are free and can call home.
God’s Ways Everywhere
But Deuteronomy 26 keeps going. After bringing the offering to God, the priest tells the giver to celebrate the good things God has done and reminds them “to include the Levites and the foreigners living among you in the celebration.”
The Levites were the priestly tribe of Israel who had no land of their own to farm. The foreigners were non-Israelites living in Israel so they too had no land of their own. Because neither had land, neither experienced the blessing of the harvest on their own. They needed someone else to provide it for them.
I cannot help but think that by inviting others into the celebration, everyday Easter expanded. Those Levites and foreigners experienced their own kind of everyday Easter as they went from feeling like outsiders to being those who belonged. They too encountered God’s ways through their Israelite neighbors.
Our Everyday Easter
But the story is not limited to the ancient world. We too have stories about how God brought us from slavery to freedom or a life of wandering to one where we fell rooted and at home.
That means we are also in a place where we can extend the blessings of what we have experienced to others.
The real question then becomes how are we going to spread our everyday Easter?
Over the last number of weeks, I have mentioned a new venture of mine, THRIV3 Holistic Life Coaching. In many ways, you could say this is one way I hope to share my everyday Easter by helping others identify how they can share theirs.
I will be launching a monthly newsletter there soon, one with reflections and resources aimed to help each of us find and share our stories. If you are interested in hearing more, reply to this email and I will happily add you to that list.