Everything had to be explained to me when I was six years old. This is true for everyone. Yet, for many adults there seems to be the belief that there are some things that we just know instinctively. We started going to church when I was five, and we didn’t just go to church on Sunday morning. We were there every time the doors were opened. I didn’t know anything that was going on or what it was all about. I just knew that Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday night were the most dreaded times of the week for me. Boring. Sit up straight, put down that hymn book unless you are going to sing, don’t make a sound and do not, under any circumstance, fall asleep! I think my parents were doing the church thing to try and save their marriage. If so, it didn’t work. My father’s church going lasted about two years and my mother made it another three years, but then it ended. I knew just about as much at five as I did at ten. In other words, I didn’t learn a thing.

But back to being six years old. It was my first Easter as a church goer, just as the previous Christmas had been my first Christmas in church. Years later my mother told me that before that, when I was really little, she took my sisters and myself to the Lakeside Church of God, but my oldest sister told me a few days later that we went for the Easter egg hunt. However, the year I was six is the first time I remember hearing the story about the death, burial and resurrection. The first time I heard it, though, it was absent some facts. Facts like; why did it happen, what did it mean, how does it affect me and why am I coloring a piece of paper of a man hanging on what looked like a clothes line post? It made no sense to me at all. So, I asked my mother, who was my primary source of information. Her answer had something to do with me being a bad boy, so this Jesus had to die for me. WHAT? Jesus died because I was bad? Yes, I was told, so I had better be good from now on. WHAT? Was He going to killed again? That got me a stern look. Or, or, or can He be uncrucified if I am good? That actually got me paddled. As a young man in Bible college I sat down with my mother one evening when I was home from Tennessee and reminded her of that moment. I asked her why I had gotten paddled. “You know why. You were being sassy about Jesus! Should’ve spanked you harder.”

Anyway, that first Easter was so weird. It was 1962. My sisters had new outfits. Some of the women wore pretty hats. The pastor was yelling about someone who climbed out of a grave. His wife (sister Tillie) was waving her arms, shouting ‘AMEN’ and weeping and wailing. It was, well, it was bizarre to a six year old. Clutched in my little hands was a picture of a man hanging on a clothesline post and I was supposed to know what this was all about. What I really wanted to do was get home and dig into my Easter basket. As it happened, that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

Over the next few years I dreaded that holiday. The next year, when I was seven, I colored a picture of a hole in the rock with another big rock laying close by. I had no idea what it was. Maybe I wasn’t listening in Sunday School, but I can’t imagine that, really. I was a good listener. I think my teacher was just not making it understandable. She was in high school and was always talking with my oldest sister about this boy or that boy in her school. Going into the church after Sunday School, the pastor ranted about a man climbing out of the grave, his wife wailed and shouted ‘AMEN’ and all the ladies were dressed up. The difference that year, though, was that after church people were flocking over to the pastor’s son (Little Johnny) who was selling something. When we got into the car each of us kids were handed a small square piece of clear plastic with a splinter imbedded in the plastic. On one edge of the plastic was a small metal loop that had been screwed into the plastic so that you could run a fine chain or a string through the loop and wear the plastic like jewelry. Along with each little plastic square was a small piece of paper on which there were typed words that said the splinter inside was a small piece of the actual cross of Christ. My mother had bought four of these things for $5.00 dollars each. Seems the pastor had come across these amazing artifacts and was passing them onto his congregation. $5.00 a piece in the early 1960s was a pretty steep investment. But, you got an actual piece of the cross! Bought on Easter Sunday! Neither of my sisters seemed very impressed and my father was disgusted that my mother spent $20.00 on cheap plastic, but I was fascinated. I was a believer in those splinters, at least for a while. But, I had questions.

Where did these pieces of wood come from? The cross, Dummy. (My oldest sister.) OK, sure, but where was the cross being kept? I dunno. I guess Israel. OK, but this was a long time ago. How come the wood didn’t rot? It is holy wood, Dummy. (Oldest sister again.) If you call your brother a dummy one more time, so help me I am pulling over and coming back there! (My father.) This shut all of us up. At home, though, I asked my younger sister, who was three years older than me and seemed pretty smart. Hey, Debbie, how did they get that splinter in there. I dunno. Looks like they put it on one piece of plastic and glued another piece of plastic on that. Oh, yeah, sure. Did they wash the blood off? I don’t see no blood. Debbie looked at me only as an older sister can look at her idiot brother. Look, Dummy, (I thought that was my real name for a long time) it really isn’t a piece of the cross. It is just a piece of wood. Mom paid twenty bucks for this junk. She thinks it’s real. It’s just junk.

I was devastated. In fact, I didn’t believe her. But then, I thought about it. It did seem hard to believe. You could see the glue marks. The little ‘letters of authenticity’ were typed on cheap paper and on an old typewriter. Mom had believed the pastor and had been duped.

Our father stopped going to church that day, except for special events. We kids had to go for a few more years, but our mother eventually became disillusioned. I developed a very negative attitude about church. They only wanted your money and they really liked to scare people. From the time I was ten until I was seventeen, I only went to church when my Aunt Arie and Uncle Rueben came to visit from their farm in Montpelier, Indiana. They were the kind of people who went to church on Sunday, regardless of where they were. Also, Aunt Arie had a real desire to see her brother (my father) come to Jesus.

Then, in June 1973 I was at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes’ camp in Ohio. There, the Gospel was explained in a way that a seventeen year old guy could understand. It was there I accepted Christ as Savior. After I got home, I went a couple of times to the old church I had attended some years earlier. The pastor screamed and ranted, Sister Tillie wept and wailed, no one said a word to me. It just wasn’t real. I could feel it. Then I went to the church just down the road from me and found my home. The first Easter season after I accepted Christ, I came to understand about the cross, I came to understand about the suffering and the beating and the torture, I came to understand about the Resurrection. The Sacrifice made sense. It was all done for me.

We have made Resurrection into something it is was never meant to be. It is called Easter, but that is not a Biblical word. Easter came from the Roman Catholic church when they absorbed other pagan religions. Easter was the celebration of the goddess Estre. The goddess Estre was (is) the goddess of fertility. In the history books and old sculptures, she is often portrayed with two rows of breasts down each side, like a dog or a cat. We celebrate with eggs and rabbits, which were a part of the pagan worship. You perhaps already know, but Easter doesn’t always fall on Resurrection Day, but it does always fall on the day dedicated to the worship of Estre (which is where we get ‘Easter’). In honor of the fertility goddess the people used rabbits and eggs in their worship, hiding the eggs and letting the children find them. Resurrection has nothing to do with any of that, yet we persist in not only using the name but in using the elements of worship as well.

Celebrate Resurrection Day with us on Sunday. Or, if you aren’t in Northeast Indiana, find a church that is focusing on the true story of the greatest day in all history.

Blessings.