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It’s Not Easter Today…

It’s Every Day.
4.8.12

So today in Ukraine it’s not really Easter…because they go by another Calendar called the Julian Calendar:

Wikipedia describes exactly why Western and Eastern Christianity celebrate Easter on different dates but to me it still doesn’t make any sense? If we are ONE body in Christ than why all the division. Same goes with all of the different denominations of Christianity. To me denomination=division and Jesus says we are one body unified by his spirit. 
It makes sense that the prayer Jesus wrote to his disciples before his death would say ” Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name-the name you gave me-so that they may be one as we are one.” One. He said we are ONE. Do you think that is what has happened to the church? Nope. 

Here is what I found on wikipedia about the discrepancies about the date of Easter:

“In Western Christianity, using the Gregorian calendar, Easter always falls on a Sunday between 22 March and 25 April. Eastern Christianity bases its calculations on the Julian Calendar. Due to the 13 day difference between the calendars between 1900 and 2099, 21 March corresponds, during the 21st century, to 3 April in the Gregorian Calendar. Easter therefore varies between 4 April and 8 May on the Gregorian calendar (the Julian calendar is no longer used as the civil calendar of the countries where Eastern Christian traditions predominate). Among theOriental Orthodox some churches have changed from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar and the date for Easter as for other fixed and moveable feasts is the same as in the Western church.[64]

The precise date of Easter has at times been a matter for contention. At the First Council of Nicaea in 325 it was decided that all Christian churches would celebrate Easter on the same day, which would be computed independently of any Jewish calculations to determine the date of Passover. It is however probable (though no contemporary account of the Council’s decisions has survived) that no method of determining the date was specified by the Council. Epiphanius of Salamis wrote in the mid-4th century:

…the emperor…convened a council of 318 bishops…in the city of Nicea…They passed certain ecclesiastical canons at the council besides, and at the same time decreed in regard to the Passover that there must be one unanimous concord on the celebration of God’s holy and supremely excellent day. For it was variously observed by people….[65] ” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter)


Despite all of these differences, what I have come to realize is that they have been many attempts in history to make Easter the same day throughout Christianity in world, but it just hasn’t happened. I still feel that if we are all ONE BODY we should come together and celebrate together. Makes sense to me. However because of the divisions in the church & the brokenness of the World that isn’t the way it is. But it COULD BE.
What I would like to remind everyone is that although today in Ukraine most people are not Celebrating Easter & most people in the U.S. are celebrating…Easter really is EVERY DAY. Easter is only a replacement word for the celebration of the resurrection of Christ. Let’s not forget that the fullness of that is available every day; the forgiveness, the love poured out on the cross through the death of God’s one & only son, Jesus, the redemption, the complete freedom we can have in him. So we should be able to freely Celebrate that freedom without chains & without constraints on a date. I think if Jesus were here today he would say “You Pharisees, you have it ALL wrong…” He would probably say you are missing it all together. So, really…what is Easter to you? Just another day? Only one day a year? One day my hope is that followers of Christ would unite in this & realize the fullness of the the crucifixion or death & the resurrection on Christ & the fullness of life we are given through this which is available. The choice is simple: Walk with Christ in his Spirit & Die to yourself or Live in the Flesh & in sin. Easter is not just another day. It’s the greatest hope we have to overcome sin & death: 
” Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” 1 Corinthians 15-55-57