Easter – and some Unequivocal Questions – Sunday, April 01, 1956
It is a good thing sometimes to examine the reasons for some of the things we do. Customs and habits are relatively easy to make and relatively difficult to break. And among our most persistent habits and customs are those which have to do with traditional days and seasons, one of which is Easter. And we should like to look at it a moment to see, if separated from some of its unessentials, how much it really means to each of us.
The bonnets and the baskets, the colored eggs and colorful costumes all add their interest and beauty to the season. But the real purpose of Easter we can quickly arrive at by asking some unequivocal questions and giving some unequivocal answers.
That purpose, of course, is to commemorate the return from death to life of Jesus the Christ, by whose triumph over death all mankind have the assurance of coming forth from the grave—all of which faces us squarely with these inescapable alternatives: either this event as witnessed and recorded in history is true or it is not. Either men are immortal, or they are not. Either we ourselves shall pass through death to life and shall come forth again by resurrection or we shall not.
Such questions are not to be equivocated. The answers are either—or. And why should we concern ourselves with such unequivocal questions? Because the very meaning and purpose of life depends upon them—for how a man lives, how he acts, what he does, depends upon what he believes—what he thinks he is, what significance he. attaches to life, where he thinks he is going and what he thinks he will find when he gets there. Of course, we are free to believe what we want to believe.
It is quite reasonable that men should be reluctant to accept what they cannot explain, and it is certainly true that no man now living can explain the process of resurrection. But then who is there among us to explain how life came to be in the first place and who is there to deny that we live? If we should have to give up everything that men cannot explain, we should have to give up much indeed, including life itself. But it is fortunate that neither truth nor God is limited by man’s understanding.
He who has given us life here has assured us of life hereafter. What he has done is the assurance of what he can do. “Which is the more difficult, to be born or to rise again?”1 That we should live forever is surely no greater miracle than that we should live at all. And so, we accept this day in recognition of the reality that if a man dies, he shall rise again.
And to those who live (and to those who have ever lived) and to those who have lost their loved ones, we would witness this day that our God and Father who gave us life here, has also given us life hereafter—us, and all men, and all those we love and cherish. Stripped of all its unessentials, this is the great and real meaning of Easter. Believest thou this? … Yea, Lord: I believe. . .”2 *
*Revised
1Blaise Pascal, Pensees sur la Religion.
2John 11:26,27
April 01, 1956
Broadcast Number 1,389