Easter Sunrise services are probably found in every community in America, perhaps in multiple churches as well as in joint community gatherings. What a wonderful way to make an emotional as well as a devotional connection to that first Easter morning. Many of us have happy memories of such services from our childhood, especially if we lived far enough south so that Easter morning would not be a final day of winter’s snow, or if the weather was conducive and we didn’t have to come with umbrellas to avoid being drenched in spring rains.
On Florida’s east coast, it’s quite common to find such services being conducted on the beach so that there can be an unobstructed view of the sun rising above the horizon, glistening on the waters like sparkling diamonds blinking on the waves. One of those kinds of memories for this writer is the Miami area Easter Sunrise Service conducted on the floating stage of the Miami Marine Stadium, which could seat several thousand, with an area on the water between the stands and the stage for people to engage in the service from their boats. Sponsored by Key Biscayne Presbyterian Church, local pastors and musicians were part of the service, which usually included a special guest. One year that was Joni Eareckson Tada. But the great reality should not be memories of our sunrise services, but of that first “Son-Rise” when the Son of God rose from the dead, as He had promised to do. That monumental event marked the death of death (as John Own famously described it) and the ratification of the Father’s acceptance of Jesus’ atoning sacrifice on our behalf (as Paul described int in Romans 1). Paul also rightly describes the resurrection as one of those things of first importance in 1 Corinthians 15, the passage from which countless Easter sermons are preached each year.