Easter Correction

"And Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus, and said, Ye men of Athens, in all things, I perceive that ye are very religious.  For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. What therefore ye worship in ignorance, this I set forth unto you. (Acts 17: 22-23, New American Standard)

It didn't start with Paul in Athens but this is easily the most obvious moment in the long history of the Judeo-Christian people where the practice of another culture was appropriated and corrected into orthodox use.

The first verses in Genesis borrowed their theme and structure from the Babylonians and include the correction in describing how the creator God (Elohim/אֱלֹהִים) made a "big light to rule the day and a little light to rule the night."  It as a clear jab at the Sun and Moon Gods of the Babylonian pantheon now reduced to the status of creature made by  אֱלֹהִים on day four.  

Important to our current context are the ways in which the Feast of the Resurrection of our Lord finds it's place in the calendar.  For centuries long before the one including Jesus of Nazareth the ancient world marked the day when daylight became more than half of a full day's cycle from sunset to sunset.  We still call it the spring equinox.  

Good observation of the movement of the sun across the sky measured by length of shadows and locations on the horizon helped the ancients to know when the day was to occur.  It meant success, again.  It meant light had returned to its place of authority and presence and reliability.

Easter -- as the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus -- also recasts ancient pagan religious standards and tells our story of how God's Word/Light/Son was returned to a place of authority and presence and reliability.

There is no need for us to worry about the facts here.  There is and has always been a need to bring meaning to them, to make sense of them.  So when Paul stands and proclaims the "unknown" god is knowable by having acted in human history in particular by raising Jesus from the dead, Paul is correcting a set of meanings.

It is encouraging to see human history move from one understanding to the next, from sun gods, to big lights, from Ishtar's fertility to Easter's trustworthiness, from unknown gods to knowable God.  Our correction is to thank God for them but to see beyond the sun and moons, to think beyond our own inventiveness and trust God to make God's self known to us.  

Our Easter correction is still timed by finding the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.  But we do not worship the calendar, the sun, or the moon.  We give God thanks and praise for being one with us and just like us to have died and by returning to that place of authority, and presence, and trustworthiness to give us hope in our lives right now and forever, not just once a year.