96 lines
4.9 KiB
Markdown
96 lines
4.9 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: Why Easter is the best week of the year
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description: >-
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Based on a talk given to my colleagues at
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<a href="https://www.scottlogic.co.uk">Scott Logic</a> for Maundy
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Thursday, 2024.
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pubDate: 2024-03-30
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---
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As you might have noticed, it is Easter this week! So I'd like to take five or
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five minutes of your time to share why I – and about two billion other humans
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going about the place just now – think Easter is the best week of the year. And
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it's got something to do with a special Christian ritual called Communion.
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Communion, at its heart, is about as simple a ritual as you can get. You get
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together with a bunch of other people. You share some bread, and you share some
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wine.
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And it’s because of this ritual that so many people regard Easter as the best
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week of the year. I want to explain to you why that is, and more than that, I
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want to convince you that Easter is the best week of the year for you, too!
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If you’ve passed by _The Hub_ at the top of Johnstone Terrace here in
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Edinburgh recently, you might have notice the banner which is draped over
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the railings just now – reading, ‘RITUALS THAT UNITE US.’
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Now, that might seem like an odd idea. But wouldn’t that be great, if we
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actually had a ritual which could unite us? Because the world could surely do
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with a bit more unity right now. The world seems so divided, and sometimes it
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seems like there’s no hope for real unity.
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We can see that in our politics. We’re divided about foreign policy, about
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taxation policy, about trade policy, about environmental policy.
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And the conflicts that we have in this country seem pretty trivial when we
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remember the conflicts that are playing out in other parts of the world right
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now. In Israel and Gaza. In Sudan. In Russia and Ukraine.
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And there’s plenty of conflict happening on the small scale, too. Often it’s the
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smallest-scale conflicts which hurt us the most deeply. Your landlord pushes you
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around. That friend you trusted like no-one else in the world lets you down. The
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partner or spouse you loved like no-one else in the world – you end up fighting.
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It’s possible that you’re going to be reading this right now with a heavy heart
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because of a broken relationship in their life. And doesn’t that hurt more than
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anything else we know?
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When the world is groaning so heavily under the weight of conflict, and some
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banner on _The Hub_ tells us a ritual can unite us, that seems so out of
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proportion to the scale of the problem, doesn’t it? What can a ritual do? A bit
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of old superstition? An excuse to divide people, maybe – what can a ritual do
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to unite us?
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Well, two thousand years ago, a man had a meal with his friends. Together, they
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shared a meal of bread and wine – which, in that time and place, was the most
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ordinary meal imaginable.
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And yet, in that most ordinary event imaginable, something was happening which
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was totally unimaginable. As this man, Jesus, shared the elements of this meal,
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he made some extraordinary statements about what he was doing: ‘take, eat, this
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is my body’ – ‘drink this, all of you; this is my blood of the new covenant.’
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(The word ‘covenant’ means a promise.)
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He told them he wasn’t just giving them bread and wine, he was giving his body
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and his blood, and a promise.
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Before Jesus ate another meal, he was flogged and nailed to a cross. His blood
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was spilt and his body broken, even to death.
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And yet, that wasn’t the end of the Easter story. Because three days later,
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mourners turned up at Jesus’ tomb to pay their respects, and found the tomb
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empty, the stone rolled away. Then they became the first of crowds of
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incredulous eyewitnesses to see Jesus, the same Jesus who was killed on a cross,
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alive.
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Some magic trick, right? But this matters a hell of a lot more than just some
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magic trick. Because Jesus became the first person in history to prove that you
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really can both have your cake and eat it. He gave his life, and lived! As a
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result, we can have his life and our own. We can join with Jesus through the
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ritual of Communion which he established, and thereby, through Jesus’ body, join
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together with everyone else who takes part in that ritual, as one body. Then we
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can start living our brand-new, full-fat, original-recipe life overflowing with
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generosity where we too can both give our life to others and enjoy it ourselves.
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Indeed, Jesus taught us and showed us that it’s precisely by giving our lives to
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others that we get to truly live ourselves.
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This is why, in spite of all the division which persists in the world today, two
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billion people regard this week as the best week of the year. Two billion
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people, from every nation on Earth, speaking thousands of languages, of every
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age and culture and gender and race, who defy the divisions of this world to
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insist on joining together as one body in Jesus.
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Because Jesus’ new covenant, his promise to all of us, is that in an apparently
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hopelessly divided world, there exists real hope for unity. And that’s why
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Easter is the best week of the year.
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