Magyar Egyház, 1962 (41. évfolyam, 2-12. szám)
1962-03-01 / 3. szám
8 MAGYAR EGYHÁZ MAGYAR CHURCH David H. C. Read The Memory of Easter Is Not Enough Like Christmas, Easter is loaded with memories. For most of us it is one of those days with lilies and church bells, eggs and bonnets, sunshine and hallelujahs, all mixed up. Some people have special memories on Easter. Some of you have been in Jerusalem and shared in the dawn service at the Garden Tomb, with the clear eastern sun striking across the little hill shaped lige a human skull. Or perhaps you have just a peaceful memory of a lovely spring day in the country, with the Easter hymns echoing from a little church across a lake to the hills beyond. I can never forget my own most memorable Easter. Two days before, I was one of 10,000 prisoners-of-war in a German prison camp. Many of us had been there, or in other camps in Germany for five years. Some had begun almost to give up hope of ever being free again. Conditions for the last few weeks had steadily become worse. There was almost no food left in the camp. Then on Good Friday, at three o’clock in the afternoon just as I was conducting a little service with some American troops, it happened. The advance troops of General Patton’s Third Army racing from the Rhine had reached our camp. In the time that it took me to say the benediction to the service—we were free men. Before we knew that this was going to happen, I had been asked if we could have an Easter Communion in the camp and starving men assured me they would save a little bread for that day. I promised that we would—and on Easter Sunday we did. What an Easter Service we had on that first Sunday as free men! We spread a table in the open air. Around it stood— or lay, for many men were still too weak to stand—thousands of men, Americans, British, Africans, French, Jugo-Slavs, Russians, of almost every possible Christian Church. We sang, we prayed, we received the Sacrament. Allied planes swooped across the blue sky above. In that battle-scared corner of Europe at least, Easter was not forgotten, and there was no one at that service who did not want to be there. A memory. Yes; of course, every Easter is a memory—a memory of the most tremendous thing that ever happened to this old world of ours. Across the years, across the battered history of man with his wars and struggles, his hopes and achievements, we remember One who died on a lonely cross, died under a weight of human sin. And we remember—yes, The author is the pastor of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City. During World War II he served in the British armed forces, was taken prisoner by the German Army and spent five years in a prison camp in Western Germany. • across the world on Easter morning we remember, in a thousand different languages and with every variety of ritual, that “on the third day he rose again from the dead.” What human memory can compare with this! Can you think of any other event, one single event that took place hundreds of years ago, that today arouses one single unanimous echo in human hearts around the worldf This is, without exception, the most powerful memory the human race has ever known. No tyranny, no terror, no mockery, and no scorn has ever been, or will ever be able to eradicate it from the earth. Memory—yes, but memory is not enough! No matter how sacred they may be, we cannot live on memories. We live by that which is alive and real for us now. And here is the miracle of Easter. For when you think of what it is that we today remember you will see that it cannot be just a memory. The memory of a death. But the memory of a resurrection means that someone is still alive. If we truly remember that Jesus rose from the dead—then He must be alive today, alive now, really present here with us. What we are celebrating is not just what happened in a Palestinian garden years ago, but the actual presence for us note of the One ivho conquered death. The Christian faith is not a sentimental attachment to an old, old story, but a living experience today. It is not a pious recollection of One who died 2000 years ago; it is a personal awareness of Him now. After all, that is what matters. My memory of release from a German prison camp is a vivid and grateful memory for me, but I can assure you that what matters to me now is that I am alive and free. When St. Paul speaks about what matters most to him, he does not deal in memories. He talks of a life to be lived, and a person to be known. This is what Easter means to him, and this is what it means to millions of his followers today. Here is Paul’s secret of a living faith: —“that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings.” THE DIVINE FELLOWSHIP Jesus came back from the dead in order that people like you and me could get to know Him, It is as simple as that. And yet that is just what so many are missing today. Everybody knows about Jesus. Whoever you are, and whereever you are on Easter morning, you could tell something about Him—that He lived; that He said some things that you have never forgotten; that He helped people, and loved people; that He died on a cross; that He was reported to have been seen again alive afterwards. Almost every man, woman, and child in this country knows at least something
