The Trivialisation of Easter

 

The sanitisation of Easter is underway again. Bunny rabbits, eggs, chocolate, and daffodils are piled up in supermarkets, while store assistants dress up in Disney costumes (at least in our local Coop) and the lambs on UK hillsides shiver in the cold. And shiver they should, because the British tradition of roast lamb is probably closer to the symbolism of the original Easter story than you might think.

I was taking a look at that story this week and I noticed much more similarity between the news reports coming out of Ukraine and the first Easter, rather than any semblance of a link to the whitewashed, commercialised, trivialised and largely dismissive 'celebration' of the holiday where I live.

I saw Jesus - God's Son - lied about in court. That court was a stitch-up of people probably paid to testify against him, and he just remained silent in front of them, a picture of steady purpose and dignity. Then I watched him being tortured and abused by invading foreign soldiers. He was a civilian, not a combatant or a terrorist, but brutalised invaders don't care about that. Jesus was stripped in public, beaten, paraded by his executioners and finally nailed to a wooden cross, wearing a cruel crown of thorns. No bullet to the back of the head for him, his blood was mingled with sweat and gore as he hung on a gibbet meant for a criminal, for hours on end. There was no bunny rabbit at Calvary, no Disney character to swing down and save him. 

Perhaps the cruel images from Bocha and the station at Kramatorsk are more helpful in understanding the true nature of what was happening at Golgotha around 33 AD. Of course we have to find ways of interpreting that to children, - enter the rabbits etc - but we should not lose sight of what it cost Jesus to deal with our sin. 

'O make me understand it,

Help me to take it in,

What it meant to Thee, the Holy One,

To bear away my sin'. *

This was God's lamb put to death for the sins of the world. Here was a sign of God's presence amongst the bloodshed and horror perpetrated by sinful men and women driven by the lying spirit of Satan himself, such as we see laid out before us on our tv screens today. There is no sanitising sin. But if Easter means anything, it means that God knows what it's like to suffer injustice and rejection from people gripped by evil. And still he went on to the cross.

And on the third day he rose again! But that's for another time. And maybe the new life of the egg does have some symbolism? hmm Let's see.

* 'Give me a sight O Saviour' by Katherine Kelly © 1944 HarperCollins Religious