Easter: Dinner and a Show or Celebrating Jesus?
Have you attended church on Easter, savored breakfast, and enjoyed the music, yet didn’t grasp the message? It was like that for me as a teen. After a delicious breakfast, I enjoyed the well-rehearsed choir with a majestic pipe organ performing spine-tingling music. But the pastor’s sermon meant nothing.
My boyfriend invited me to his church after a bad experience at my mother's church. The pastor, whom I nicknamed “Old Yeller,” angrily waved his Bible, railing against the world’s evils. This new church offered something different. I saw something stirring in the people around me, but what was it? His family and friends also had it. I wanted what they had, but I only came for “dinner and a show.” Yet, I longed for whatever it was.
God grabbed my attention one morning when I was married with three young children. The altar calls, and salvation prayers at our church flooded my mind. I thought I was a Christian, but I’d never accepted Jesus as my Savior. After I prayed, everything changed. Suddenly, church made sense. I drank in the pastor’s messages and dined on the Word of God. I felt satisfied and loved by Him. It was no longer “dinner and a show.” It was all about Jesus’s immense love for me.
In John 6, Jesus preached and performed miracles all day and later transformed a boy’s small lunch into a feast with leftovers for a huge crowd. The people, mesmerized, only saw Him as a prophet. It was “dinner and a show.”
They wanted more, so the next day, they sought Jesus and His disciples but found their boat empty. They discovered Him in Capernaum as He taught in the synagogue. They asked, “Why didn’t you tell us where you were going?” He pointed out what they missed: They only came for dinner and a show. It wasn’t out of faith in him as the Messiah sent from God. They didn’t get it.
He called them to believe, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). They needed faith in Jesus, not more food. He called them to believe God’s work through Him (John 6:29). His soul-probing responses to their inquiries confused them, so they left.
Jesus asked His disciples, “Are you going to leave too?” (John 6:67)
Peter answered, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Also, we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (John 5:68-69). Peter got it.
When you go to Easter service this year, will it be to worship Jesus or for “dinner and a show”? Do you go with gratitude for your salvation because of Him? Are your spiritual hunger and thirst satisfied by Jesus, the Bread of Life, and the Living Water? If not, will you accept Him as your Savior and Lord? Your life will never be the same.
Questions for Reflection:
1. When you go to Easter service this year, will it be to worship Jesus or for "dinner and a show"?
2. Are your spiritual hunger and thirst satisfied by Jesus, the Bread of Life, and the Living Water?
