Let’s get it said. Easter is a very strange festival, right?
So profound, glorious, mysterious and gruesome, but celebrated in the most banal ways imaginable by most people.
So, how should we remember the brutal torture and execution of a Middle Eastern religious teacher and his subsequent overthrow of the essence of human fallibility and mortality, while at the same time conquering the malevolent cosmic powers that lie behind them? I know, baby chicks and chocolate. Sounds like a good fit!
You see, I think we can be so familiar with the basic facts of the Easter story that we can risk brushing it off almost as lightly. It’s funny, isn’t it, that in most churches, Easter is one of the most children focused services of the year, but is surely the least child friendly of all Christian festivals?
Having said all of this, however incongruous and odd our treatment of Easter can seem, in a sense, even the fluffiest dumbing down of this wonderful festival does at least point in roughly the right direction. Because Easter is bloody, but it’s not about blood. It’s gruesome, but it’s not about gore. It’s mysterious, but it’s not obscure.
It’s about forgiveness, sacrifice, obedience, submission, reconciliation, atonement and supernatural power but if I had to boil it down to one phrase, it would be the one that the fluffy chicks and the eggs remind us of: new life. LIFE. It’s the thing most of us desire, and all of us need and it’s what Jesus made possible for us over that first Easter weekend.
I made this video dwelling on that one word. Whoever you are, wherever you are, whether 6 or 66, maybe it’ll help you mull LIFE this Easter…
Have a good one!
the central line 