It’s the middle of April, and so Easter is upon us again. Active in church, I can easily forget the big picture of it all, and so when Easter comes around, I try to take some time to remember- why is church important? Why do I pour so much time and thought into this religious stuff?

Easter is the baseline event that historically holds my faith together. In it, a God who loves his creation, and in particular those creatures he gave minds, wills, and a sense of morality to, completes a journey in space and time to make a way to restore everything to himself.

Easter is the defining event in Christianity, when God confined himself to the limits of humanity, and as such, poured himself into death so that he might defeat it from the inside out. At Easter, God resurrected from the dead, and in doing so, claimed dominion over death and everything bound in it. God made life for the dead, and in the process, for the thinking willful ones who would choose to accept it, he would give it as a gift- a gift to those who would willingly accept his kingship.

And so, in all of the church stuff I may do, in my religious myopia I can get bogged down in the usual stuff- worrying about doing good, about keeping rules, about being moral, about being worthy- a nice Christian. But Easter reminds us that that is not the point of what happened spiritually on that occasion.

Easter reminds us that God did all of the work. God made us all in the first place. And then God made life out of death. God made good out of evil. God fixes the broken things. God restores the disgraced and the depressed. And Easter reminds us that the work is not ours to do.

In light of the season, I decided to go back and speed read Mark, if only to try and get a reminder of what was important to Jesus as he was here, fulfilling his purpose. Mark is considered the first gospel that was written, and a source for Matthew and Luke. What, according to this early source, did Jesus’ own words say about why he came into the world and his work?

In chapter 1, immediately after his temptation by Satan in the desert, we hear Jesus’ first words about his mission. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” Jesus has come to tell the world about God’s kingdom- which is a kingdom of promise and power, but also a kingdom of repentance, which requires its citizens to change.

And then Jesus preaches. He tells parables. He meets people and heals them. He yells at the existing religious authorities for their hypocrisy. And along the way he calls a circle of men around him and shares his heart with them. And his ultimate destination.

In Matthew, as Jesus in the midst of his ministry, he twice stops, and as if musing under his breath, between all of his teaching and preaching, he recalls Hosea 6:6: “Have you not learned what it means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice'” (Matthew 9:13, Matthew 12:7).

This germ of an idea is an undercurrent in Jesus’ work, in the gospel message, and in the interests of God. God has never been about sacrificial systems, because sacrificial systems are about repaying debts, and God never made us intending that our lives be lived in slavery. We were made to be like him- practitioners of mercy.

By its very nature, mercy is selfless. In mercy, our focus lies not on our interests, but on the needs and concerns of others. When we are merciful, we suspend our normal preoccupation with self stuff, and we think and act for the benefit of another. Mercy, another name for love, is the way we were originally made to function.

Sacrifice, on the other hand, is payback-focused. If we live life preoccupied with payback, we are living in a state of also trying to curry favor. We are living out of our failures and faults. We are living to try and win the love we think we must work for, which we were originally made to just know and to live from in Him, and which we were made to practice as well. And ultimately, we are self-absorbed with being right.

Love isn’t about being right. Love is about doing right. Mercy lifts us from a preoccupation with justice to a preoccupation with service. Love serves.

For this reason, Jesus labored for three years, wandering and teaching whoever he could. “The father desires that you would love like Him- not that you would always try to win His love. You can’t- He already loves you. He just wants you to realize you were made to love like Him.”

And, the point here is also this, “If you are busy spending your life concerned about others in your world, you don’t have time to worry about your righteousness with God. Love justifies itself.”

Yes- Easter is about atonement. It’s about being restored with the Creator through Christ’s propitiationary work. He did for us what we could not do for ourselves: he forgave our sins and restored our relationship with the Father. But He also gave us something we all needed- a heart capable of practicing just mercy, and not stuck about sacrifice. To those for whom He was the sacrifice, He gives a new heart. “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26).”

Because of Easter, we can have a heart of unmitigated mercy.