THOUGHTS FROM THE RECTORY season be heard or spoken. They are varied and diverse, from the banal to the highly spiritual, profound or theological. It makes you wonder how, what appears to be such a mismatch of words, can be used in connection with the same event.
Dear Friends, When I went into school the other day to lead Collective Worship (Assembly for those of an earlier era!), I asked the children how they would explain a certain word; they came up with some very imaginative ideas. It was rather like one of those ‘Management Training Exercises’ where the participants are asked to think of words that will best describe some situation, or some kind of solution to a problem. All the suggested words are then written up on a flip chart or some new-fangled computerised gizmo, so that all the words can be shared, considered and put in the appropriate place.
The truth of the matter is that they all have a place in this Easter season, but perhaps we have a tendency to put far greater emphasis on the least important words, and overlook the ones which are more of a challenge. None of us like to think or talk about matters that include pain, suffering or death; but they are all describing things that happen in our world each and every day. It is important to observe that such things as bunnies, eggs and lambs, all relate to something young and new, each with the potential to become something beyond being sweet, cuddly and cute. And, of course, Chocolate (in many shapes and sizes, but mostly egg shape), the egg to symbolise something new and the chocolate to make a significant change in one’s diet after the fasting on Lent.
All this led me to think about the words we would produce in response to the invitation to think of words that would best describe Easter. Some of those words could be: Eggs; Daffodils; Death; Chocolate; Donkeys; Stones; Cards; Resurrection; Light; Pain; Chicks; Lilies; Lambs; Flowers; New; Bunnies; Life; Hot Cross Buns; Suffering; Christmas Decorations – hey, how did that one get in there? Well, as we know, before the smells and tastes of Christmas have faded, Easter Eggs are widely available in the shops, so maybe, before the last Easter Egg has been consumed it must be time for the Christmas decorations to be seen on the supermarket shelves.
There are other things that we associate with Easter such as Hot Cross Buns (when I was a child, we would wait excitedly for the baker to do his rounds bringing the buns, which ONLY came on Good Friday – not available all year round as they are today!); lilies to decorate the church along with the daffodils (lilies, which are usually associated with death or remembrance and daffodils with Springtime and newness). All these things bring our minds to focus on the celebration of Easter – emphasising the different aspects of the story.
But it is very interesting to reflect on where our focus is at Easter (and at Christmas for that matter). All the words mentioned above will at one time or another over the Passiontide and Easter 3