The many messages of Easter
There is something about the light on an overcast April afternoon in this part of the world that can be sombre and joyful at the same moment. Dim and dreamlike, it seems as if dozens of flashlights are shining though gauze bandages. With their shifting colours of grey and indigo, the clouds might drop snow. It might freeze again. But even obscured by clouds, the sun is stronger than just a few weeks ago. It is still spring, with all its living inevitabilities.
The great Christian festival of Easter, which will be celebrated around the world on Sunday, can feel a lot like this fractured kind of day. There is darkness and trepidation in the story behind it, but also inextinguishable rays of hope burning brightly. That’s why in this part of the world, even in an era of declining church attendance, Easter in both its secular and religious observances remains the pre-eminent spring festival. And how uplifting it will be this time around after two years of COVID-19 — which at times felt like a winter that would never pass.
With crocuses and snowdrops already blooming outdoors, people will carry pots of tulips and daffodils into their homes. The artistically inclined will decorate eggs — an ancient symbol of creation. On Easter morning, children will hunt for candy eggs or dig into baskets filled with chocolate rabbits and sugary jelly beans carefully arranged in synthetic grass.
Later in the day, families will gather for an Easter feast which, after all those pandemic-driven separations and isolations, will serve as a family reunion. We’ve come through something worse than a winter. We’ve survived the most wrenching global health crisis in a century. So hallelujah.
As much as this matters, there is for many people even more to Easter. Just as there is another seasonal flower — the Easter lily with its waxen flowers and funereal fragrance — there’s another dimension to the holiday itself. In the week leading up to Sunday, Christians have been re-reading, re-telling and remembering the story of Jesus, a very good man, who roughly 2,000 years ago reached out to all people regardless of race, sex or religion. He healed. He taught. He urged his followers to change the way they lived, to love and care for one another more, to judge and harm those around them far less. Yet for what seemed like no good reason, he was tried, tortured and executed by the global superpower of that day: Imperial Rome.
The story is discomfiting, for sure, especially for those who equate Easter with a rabbit. Yet something in it remains relevant to people living in an increasingly diverse, post-modern and postChristian western world.
Ours is a baffling planet inhabited by billions of baffling humans. For nearly two months now, the Russian military juggernaut has rolled over Ukraine, murdering thousands of innocent civilians as it bombed cities into rubble; all because of the expansionist delusions of one man, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. And this is merely the latest outrage in what history tells us is an endless parade of human atrocities.
Our species defies reason. Why do so many of us hate and hurt others, even perfect innocents, so much? You don’t have to be Christian to ask this — only human. The violence, suffering and injustice that scar human history are the breaking heart of the Easter story. But they are only one chapter; because the written accounts of the first Easter end with that innocent man Jesus, who has been killed in the most gruesome way possible, coming back to life.
It is not our intention to delve into the historical or physical validity of this story. Christians themselves will debate whether they’re dealing with a literal, mythic or symbolic truth. But however it is understood, this part of Easter proclaims an existential hope for humanity.
Somehow, the harm we cause each other is not necessarily the end of things but quite possibly part of a journey to redemption, renewal, forgiveness and reconciliation. Whether it is the force of divinity or a universal justice, something abides with us. We are never alone. And for anyone, religious or not, that revelation can become part of a sustaining faith. The sun is getting warmer by the day now. And it will blaze in July. There is death. There is more life. There is Easter.