2025 Easter Message by Bishop Samuel Ike

2025 Easter Message by Bishop Samuel Ike

Beloved brethren in Christ Jesus, you are welcome to the Holy Week, which is ending with the celebration of the Resurrection of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, on Easter Sunday morning.

The Holy Week is the supreme Liturgical week of the Christian year.

In the celebration of the Holy Week, otherwise known as the Passion Week, four major services are held to highlight the main events being celebrated of what happened in the last week of Jesus’ ministry. These include Palm Sunday, already celebrated this past Sunday, 13^th April; the Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter.

On Palm Sunday, the church commemorates Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem to accomplish His saving work by being crucified on the cross, dying, being buried, and victoriously rising again. Palm branches are carried in the procession that heralds the service, which serve as a reminder of the Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem; as an act of praise to Christ the King who reigns and triumphs on the cross and also as an expression of our own readiness to take up our cross and follow our Crucified, Risen, and Glorified Lord, as we go with Him to the place of suffering and death.

The Maundy Thursday Service, held on Thursday in the Holy Week, re-enacts the giving of the new commandment, “to love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34). “Maundy” comes from the Latin word ‘mandatum,’ meaning commandment. This new commandment was dramatically demonstrated by Jesus in a new concept of selfless servant leadership, by Jesus demonstrating unalloyed humility in stooping to wash His disciples’ feet, and thus enjoining us, “to also wash one another’s feet” (John 13:14).

This now established the Washing of the Feet ceremony.

This new commandment or testament or covenant by Jesus, also marked the Institution of the Lord’s Supper, variously called the Eucharist, the Holy Communion.

Significantly, it also marks, in the Mainline churches, a day of renewal of Priestly vows and the consecration of the anointing oil used in ordination of priests, consecration of bishops, ministration of the sick, among others.

Then comes the Good Friday – celebrating the Lord’s Passion – of carrying His own cross, walking to the place of crucifixion at Golgotha, being crucified on the cross and buried. This marks the climax of sacrifice by Him who knew no sin “giving His life as a ransom for many” and “tasting death for every man” (Hebrews 2:9,10; 4:15).

Apart from the above, in-between the Palm Sunday and the Easter Sunday celebrations are Holy Week Services, which are shaped by the historical commemoration of the other events of the last week in Jesus’ earthly life – which when taken together, form and extend the events leading to the celebration of the victory He won over death – by resurrecting on Easter Sunday morning.

These include:

• Monday in the Holy Week: Jesus’ cleansing of the temple (Mark 11:12-19)
• Tuesday in the Holy Week: The Day of Questioning of Jesus (Matthew 21:23-27)
• Wednesday in the Holy Week: The Day of Betrayal of Jesus (Matthew 26:14-25)

The Significance of Christ’s Resurrection for Christians, on Easter morning is thus epitomized as follows:

• It is the most important epochal event in Christendom and marks out the Christian faith – in its distinctiveness and uniqueness – as no other personality in human history has ever died and resurrected (1 Corinthians 15:12-22);
• It authenticates our Christian faith and witness, as real, factual, and substantial experience (1 Corinthians 15:14,15);
• It gives audacity, belief, and credibility to our preaching – for if there were no resurrection of the dead, and Christ was not risen, then our preaching would be vain (1 Corinthians 15:12-14);
• It makes our Salvation in Christ alone, a veritable and worthy claim, for if Christ did not resurrect, it would have meant that the sting of death – which is sin, and the victory of the grave swallowing Jesus up would have left us yet in our sins (1 Corinthians 15:55,56,17). But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:57)
• It means that we have a glorious hope of eternity and the righteous dead are not perished, for “if it is only in this earthly life we have hope in Christ, then we are of all men most miserable, BUT NOW is Christ risen from the dead…” (1 Corinthians 15:18-20). Thus, because “Jesus is the resurrection and the life, he that believeth on Him, though he were dead, yet shall he live” (John 11:25)!

Friends, beloved, these are uncertain times in our national life and in Christendom, with escalating insecurity, killings on the Plateau, in Benue, in Ondo, in Edo, in the far north – Zamfara, Katsina and the rest of them – with heart-rending blood shedding, kidnappings, hate speeches, falling price of crude oil, yet with rising cost of living.

In the light of the sacrifice, the servant-leadership, the love for one another to the extent of washing one another’s feet and being our brother’s keeper, and the sense of victory which Jesus brought and wrought for us in the story of the Holy Week in this season, let fresh courage arise in our leadership, and in the same spirit of selfless sacrifice and servant-leadership, arise to their given mandate to defend the security of lives and properties of the citizens of this dear nation, and give us a respite, and serve not just as rulers ,but really as people who had been opportune to make the lives of fellow Nigerians better – not amassing wealth only to themselves!

And let also courage arise in the rest of us, that we can love one another. Peace will reign, wars will cease, hatred will bate, and we can in the same spirit of victory, see these vices that have been a perennial recurrence but escalated in these last few months in our dear nation, be brought also to their knees as Jesus rules over the world system, over death, over sin.

And the scripture tells us in Hebrews 4:15, that we do not have a high priest who is not affected by our infirmities, our troubles, our sufferings, but such a One who went through what we go through and yet without sin – triumphing over sin.

May this spirit of the season of Easter that reminds us of selfless sacrificial service at every level, servant-leadership in humility, love for one another – unconditionally, and the sense of victory over the vicissitudes and challenges of this present life particularly in our nation Nigeria, raise us up to a new height of serving the Lord in joy, forgiveness of our lives, and sins, and fellows who have hurt us, and peace in our land, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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2025 Easter Message by Bishop Samuel Ike

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