Forgive me, but one of my favorite memories of Easter is our family’s annual egg hunt. For me, the only thing better than searching for eggs was getting old enough to be allowed to hide the eggs. One of the most exciting things for me as a kid was to know that my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and older cousins were so good at hiding eggs that it would a long time to find the eggs. Because of their skill (which led to finding eggs weeks and months later) I always looked forward to the day that I could hide the eggs; I wanted to be as good as they were.
That kind of imitation is key to our understanding of the Easter message. Jesus’ death and resurrection are the ultimate expression of God’s love for us, and we ought to imitate that love. Paul wrote about this in Ephesians 5:1, 2: “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
When we are immature in our faith, it’s easy for us to focus on what Jesus’ death and resurrection means for us as individuals. We are forgiven. We have the promise of eternal life. We have a relationship with God that we didn’t have before. Those are great things, and they are certainly reasons for us to celebrate, not just on Resurrection Sunday but on every Sunday, even every day.
But that’s just the starting point. Just as children grow up and take on new responsibilities, Christians must grow up and start imitating God and live a life of love. Perhaps the reason that we hesitate to live that life of love is because Jesus’ love is a sacrificial love. God, as our heavenly Father, loves us in such a way that he sacrificed his only Son Jesus, who gave his life willingly, to forgive us and to give us eternal life. As God’s children and Jesus’ brothers and sisters, we are called to imitate that love. Let us love sacrificially.