February 22, 2012 If you believe as do I that Easter should be the highest and holiest of days for Christians, then its celebration should be the grandest of our holidays. If you honestly evaluate current American church culture, however, you have to honestly admit that Christmas and not Easter receives our greatest celebratory effort. While I do think that Easter and Christmas should be celebrated by Christians I do not think these two holidays should be celebrated alike. Easter is the greatest of commemorations for Christians. Easter truly is a holy day, and should therefore be observed spiritually more than commercially. One effort for Protestants to commemorate Easter would be to reclaim and reinterpret the Christian tradition of Lent. The Christian tradition of Lent is the period of the Christian liturgical year that leads up to Easter. Traditionally the purpose of Lent was the preparation of the believer (through prayer, penitence, almsgiving and self-denial) for Holy Week. Holy week being the week in which Lent ends and Maundy Thursday, Good Friday occur prior to Easter being celebrated. During Holy Week Christians should focus on the Passion of Christ, His Death and Resurrection. Easter Sunday, the celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, should be the most holy of days for Christians. While church attendance normally spikes on Easter Sunday, our traditional celebration of Easter has come to have much more to do with reuniting family members, eating at grandma’s, Easter baskets and Easter egg hunts, than with Christ’s resurrection. Traditionally, Lent was observed for forty days. Various Christian traditions have calculated the forty days differently. The number “40” was symbolically chosen to represent the time which Jesus spent in the desert prior to beginning of his public ministry, during which he was tempted by Satan. The celebration of Lent was virtually universal in Christendom until the Protestant Reformation. While many Protestant churches do not observe Lent, I believe we should renew this tradition but with a particularly spiritual and prayerful application. I suggest that over the 40 days leading up to Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter we examine ourselves through prayer, Bible reading, meditation, and contemplation. Let us examine our own lifestyles and consider whether the daily lives we are living are worthy of the great sacrifice which Jesus gave. Where we find sin in our lives we need to confess and repent. We also need to recognize that the Easter holiday is a time to communicate the good news of Jesus Christ with those with whom we work, relate, interact, and come into contact; so that we may utilize the Easter celebration as an opportunity for evangelism and not merely for our own selfish self-interests of giving gifts to our children, eating and being with our own families. Therefore, I invite you to join me over the next 40 days of preparation for Easter.