Should We Fix Easter?

The celebration of Easter can only happen one day later than it does this year. The latest Easter is celebrated is April 25th - which won't happen until the year 2038.

Why does the date for the celebration of Easter move around?

In the first three centuries Christians followed two traditions of celebrating the Resurrection of Jesus - either:

1) on, or just after, the first day of the Jewish Passover (no matter on which day of the week that Easter Day occurred), or

2) on a Sunday close to or on the first Passover Day.

Both of these methods existed continuously throughout this period..

Passover

Passover of course is based on the Jewish calendar, not Roman. It is celebrated on 14th day of the month of Nisan which is the first month in the Jewish calendar. This very ancient tradition for the timing and manner of celebrating Passover came from instructions found in the Book of Leviticus.

In the first decades of its existence the Christian church was mostly made up of Jewish people who accepted Jesus as their promised Messiah. However by the second century the church had spread throughout the Roman Empire and it was now mostly made up of non-Jewish people.

These Gentile Christians would check with their Jewish neighbours about when the Passover would take place that year and set their celebration of Easter accordingly.

Dissatisfaction

By the end of the 3rd century Christians began to express dissatisfaction with the custom of relying on the Jewish community to determine the date of Easter - the chief complaint being that the Jewish communities sometimes erred in setting Passover to take place before the spring equinox.

Because of this dissatisfaction with reliance on the Jewish calendar, some Christians began to experiment with independent computations. Others, however, felt that the customary practice of consulting Jews should continue, even if the Jewish computations were in error. Apparently throughout the geographically diverse Roman Empire it sometimes happened that Jews in one city might determine Passover differently from Jews in another city.

This controversy between those who advocated independent computations, and those who wished to continue the custom of relying on the Jewish calendar, was causing a sense of disunity in the Church when Constantine came to power in the early 4th Century.

Council of Nicaea

Constantine wanted a united Empire, and after defeating the leader of the Eastern half of the Empire in 324 AD one of the first things Constantine did was to call a council of Christian leaders - the first item on their agenda was to establish a uniform system for the dating of Easter. If Christianity was to help keep the Empire united it had to be uniform within itself, so differences over the dating of Easter had to be sorted out. This meeting is know as the Council of Nicaea and it took place in 325 in the year of our Lord. It of course ended up being about much more than the dating of Easter, and the Nicene Creed, which Christians around the world have used in worship for centuries, had its origins in this council at Nicaea.

The method for the dating of Easter that was agreed upon by that Council in Nicaea is essentially the same method that we still follow today.

The Method for Dating Easter

Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the full moon after the northern hemisphere's spring (or vernal) equinox. According to the early church calculations the equinox is on March 21 - even though, astronomically speaking, the equinox actually occurs on March 20 in most years . The name equinox is derived from the Latin aequus (equal) and nox (night), because around the equinox, the night and day have approximately equal length.)

Some of you may know that our Orthodox brothers and sisters sometimes celebrate Easter on a different date than the rest of the church - that is because they base their calculations on the earlier Julian Calendar - whereas the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches use what is known as the Gregorian Calendar which was established in the 16th Century by Pope Gregory the 13th (who used astronomers and mathematicians of his day to create a more accurate calendar calculation.)

Fix the Date

All this sounds so complicated, doesn't it? Wouldn't it be easier to simply fix a date, like was done with Christmas?

I read a news item about this very subject a few weeks ago. Earlier this month Cambridge professor Sir Colin Humphreys published a book called The Mystery of the Last Supper in which he claims the "The Last Supper was on Wednesday, April 1, AD 33, with the crucifixion on Friday, April 3, AD 33." Humphreys believes that his research not only definitively establishes the dates, which have eluded most scholars, but that it resolves an apparent conflict within the Gospel accounts of Jesus' last days.

Sir Humphreys says the discrepancies among the Gospels happened because they used an older calendar than the official Jewish one. Based on his conclusions Humphreys says the case can be made for giving Easter a permanent date as the first Sunday in April.

Well then - should we simply go with that?

I would like to suggest that there are three symbolical reasons to keep Easter as moving date.

God of Surprises

1) A moving Easter reminds us that God is a God of surprises - just as the date of Easter can surprise us from year to year. God has acted in surprising ways throughout history. The Bible is full of surprises: a very elderly couple give birth to a child, a shepherd boy from an insignificant tribe is chosen to be a great king, God comes to Elijah in a still, small voice rather than in grand displays of fire and earthquakes, and of course the greatest surprise of all - an empty tomb on Easter morning!

Hope for All Time

2) The hope of the resurrection is not just for one moment in time, it moves with us throughout all time. Just as death can descend upon us at any time, there also is ever-present hope that rises from the empty tomb. Jesus' resurrection gives hope to all people that death is not the final word!

This hope is for all time, not just a specific day of the year. A recognition of this hope throughout time is seen in the long-held consideration by the church of every Sunday being a mini-celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. Once a week we are reminded that Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday. To fix the date of Easter could limit it to simply being a commemoration of a historical event rather than a celebration of an eternal hope.

Forces Beyond Our Control

3) A moving Easter reminds us that we are not ultimately in control, that there are forces beyond ourselves that impact and influence our lives. Of course this should be obvious to us at all times, but our current culture keeps selling us the lie that we are in control of our own lives, that we are masters of our own destiny - and this of course leads us to act like we don't really need God.

One of the reasons I think Easter has not become as commercialized as Christmas is simply because of the moveable date - it is not as easy develop a business plan around a moveable date, so thankfully it remains a celebration mostly tied to the church and not to commerce.

We like to plan out our lives, to schedule things, to be in control! A moveable Easter interrupts our schedules and reminds us that ultimately it is God who is in control and that relying on ourselves alone leads to eventual despair and hopelessness.

Hopefulness

Easter is about the opposite of hopelessness. Easter is about hopeFULness. The good news of the resurrection of Jesus fills us with hope, even in the midst of uncertainty.

• Just as the date of Easter moves from year to year, the hope of Jesus moves with us throughout the days, months and years of our lives - bringing light into the midst of our darkest hours.
• Just as the date for Easter is not a static thing, Jesus is a dynamic force, moving through the world by the power of the Spirit - bringing new life into the midst of believers everywhere.
• Just as the date for Easter is not easy to determine, Jesus is calling us to a mission that goes beyond our pre-determined paths - a mission that is often surprising, filled with challenges, yet in the end more rewarding than we could ever imagine.

So in the future, when you are trying to remember when Easter is being celebrated that year, may you remember that our risen Lord is always with you - regardless of the date... and may that thought renew within you hope, peace and joy for all time!