BLOGS

The celebration of Easter requires specific preparations depending on your religious or secular perspective. For some, the planning concentrates on the Easter Sunrise Service and hot cross buns. For others it involves family gatherings perhaps void of religious emphasis.

Easter is a special celebration in the Christian community. It represents the completion of a very important remembrance involving the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus. In some traditions Lent begins with the wild festival of Mardi Gras and ends with the more subdued religious experience celebrating the unexplainable mystery of the resurrection.

In 2010, Easter generated 14 billion - that’s with a B - dollars in retail sales, with 60% of the expenditures involving food, candy, clothing and gifts. These expenditures seem to lack any relevance or direct correlation to the passion of the Christ. While the secular world celebrates the strange relationship between rabbits and colored chicken eggs, the church also, at times, gets caught up with details that seem to lack relevance. A recent news report indicates that the nails used in the crucifixion of Jesus may have been found or rediscovered. For the life of me, the significance of this discovery escapes me but it is likely to stimulate increased religious activity for those who love to display and worship religious relics. A few weeks ago we received word that Pope Benedict’s latest book exonerates the Jews for the death of Jesus. It’s unfortunate that earlier Catholic leaders blamed the Jews. Wasn’t it the Romans who crucified Jesus?

It is indeed fortunate that Jesus believes in forgiveness and isn’t overly sensitive as to the nature of our celebration commemorating this ultimate sacrificial act of Love. In fact, the entire Easter celebration is the recognition that God felt the need to admit that the development of the human species was flawed and took a wrong turn when jealousy, greed and envy snuck into the evolutionary process, becoming a dominate force in the relationship between the creator and the created. God took a calculated risk granting ultimate freedom to the creation, hoping against hope for a reciprocal expression of ultimate love in return. God gambled and lost in terms of this creation design, but came back by saving the day and taking the crucifixion of Jesus and using this sacrifice to trump jealousy, greed and envy. This expression of Love and ultimate sacrifice has specific meaning for those within the historical traditions of the Christian Church but it is a message the world desperately needs.

It’s indeed fortunate that God really loves us and is willing to forgive ‘we the unforgivable’. Easter is not about food, clothing and candy. Easter is about forgiveness and the mystery of undeserved love given that we humans too frequently refuse to accept or even acknowledge.

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