The Cost of Easter

The Lord blessed me with another opportunity to provide a message. This time for our Easter Sunrise service....

During the time I was thinking about the Sunrise Service message I was to deliver, someone pointed out to me an advertising campaign from Wal-Mart – “Easter Costs Less at Wal-Mart”. For some reason, I immediately knew where my message would come from. Was not sure what it was yet, but it was going to be based on this ad from Wal-Mart.

As I thought about it, my first thoughts were ughhh…now we are equating Easter with commercialism and spending money. It’s that way with Christmas and now Easter is under commercial attack! The most I remembered seeing before was the cute Cadbury bunny ads with the bunny clucking like a chicken and laying chocolate eggs or the newsprint ads displaying bargains on your new Easter outfit for Easter Sunday or the coming springtime fashions. But this seems different, flashier. The highest, most holy celebration of Christianity is now being sold as another reason to run to the store and buy stuff to save money? Is this a sign of our times?

There’s a message there, yes, but I was unsettled. That’s not a message for an Easter Sunrise Service.

Once over the commercialism aspect, I then was struck with the “cost” statement. Easter costs less at Wal-Mart? What of the cost of Jesus dying on the cross? Was this ad poking at that? A Wal-Mart Easter costs less than the cost of Jesus dying on the cross? Now I am feeling offended! How could someone dream up this kind of slogan for Easter knowing that the cost of Easter was the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross! How dare they! I feel like writing a letter! Boycott! Boycott!

That’s a message, but I was still unsettled. That’s not a message for an Easter Sunrise.

The cost thing…keeps tugging at me. Hmmm… I’m thinking Easter doesn’t cost anything. I’m distracted from what is really important. There is a story I read of Leonardo da Vinci, I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it is said that after he completed his masterpiece of the "Last Supper", he took a friend of his to see his just completed work. The friend's first comment was, "Look at that cup! It’s beautiful. My eyes are drawn to it. It’s wonderful! It’s striking!" Without batting an eye, Leonardo took a brush and painted over the cup. "Nothing in my painting should attract more attention than the face of Jesus."

I was distracted by this Wal-Mart ad talking about the cost of Easter and it was drawing my eyes away from the face of Jesus! Jesus gives the free gift of new life! Jesus paid the price from Alpha to Omega, once and for all, so that we have NO cost at Easter. He will wipe every tear from the eye. The sting of death is gone and the old order of things is passed away. He paid with a cost that filled a tomb and then emptied it with a mark down that says “free for the asking”! To all who are thirsty He will give drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.

The One seated on the throne says “those who overcome the spiritual distractions of the world will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children.”

By worldly standards, "At Wal-Mart Easter Costs Less", but in the Kingdom of God, Easter is free for the asking!