What’ll you eat today?  I imagine a great many of us will begin our day’s food consumption in just a few minutes with what’s sure to be a fabulous breakfast cooked by some of the men of the church.  I wonder if they’re doing pancakes today, I always did like pancakes and I know you do too!  Later on, my guess is that quite a few of us will sit with our families and friends and partake in the ubiquitous Easter ham.  Believe it or not, I never really liked ham until a few years ago…just about the same time as I started liking tomatoes.  Mom says that’s when my tastebuds, unlike the rest of me, finally matured.  And then tonight for dinner, what will it be?  A ham and cheese sandwich perhaps?  That is, assuming there’s room left over after lunch.  My family’s usual Easter feast always sees me eating so much that I swear I’ll never eat again.  Obviously, that’ll be as false an oath this year as it’s been every year prior. 

  Here, having arrived joyfully on Easter Sunday, isn’t it interesting to think that all of this begins with eating? 

  Way, way back in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve take bites of forbidden fruit, yielding to the dark power of temptation.  They want to be like God, to know what he knows, to see what he sees.  But it backfires.  God is displeased and they haven’t learned much save that they’re naked.  Next thing you know they’re sent to live the remainder of their lives East of Eden. It’s a place where the ground requires work to bring forth food and women must undergo pains in labor.  There, after the fall, God says to Adam and Eve – “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

  It’s there, where death enters the scene.  Death generally accompanies sin if you believe the Bible.  But even back then, even back when God ejects Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, He makes them a promise.  Given to them by a gracious God is the promise of a coming day of Victory.  God tells that dirty snake, that symbol of evil and death that his days are numbered – “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel."  John Calvin called this verse the protoevangelium.  The pre-Gospel if you will for in this verse God announces his intent to destroy evil and sin and even death through the heel of a man.

  This man, of course, is Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became truly human.

  Down through the ages, from the Garden of Eden all the way through works of the Old Testament, prophets and teachers spoke of this coming.  Every verse, every syllable in the Old Testament points to Him.

  This is the Jesus Christ, according to Paul in his letter to the Philippians “who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.  And being found in human form, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross. “

  That’s where we’ve been these last six weeks leading up to this day –remembering Jesus and His walk to Jerusalem and the Cross.  Before his demise, the Romans had tortured Him, His friends had betrayed Him or abandoned Him.  Crowds of people who’d cheered him previously screamed out – Crucify Him.  For our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate.  They nailed Him to a cross at 9 in the morning.  There, on Calvary, His blood trickled to the ground.  At three o’clock, He died.  To the entire world it looked as though death had done to Him what it had done to all the people from Adam and Eve forward.  It appeared as though death, that ravenous and rapacious creditor had swallowed Him up forever.

  But this time, the tables were turned.  This time, a woman approaches a grave in tears and the next thing she knows she’s chatting with the very man she mourns over.  This time, two men walking to Emmaus break bread and find themselves joined in their meal by none other than Jesus.  The same Jesus who’d died on a Roman Cross just three days prior.