Replacement Easter

We have just been through Easter, a strange experience. I live in the UK so our experiences are no doubt different from other parts of the world.  An on-line dictionary describes Easter as “a Christian feast commemorating the resurrection of Jesus.” It adds that it is observed on the first Sunday following the full moon that occurs on or following the vernal equinox – March 21st. These facts are important to observe when we look at just what has happened this year to ‘Easter’.

First of all, Easter was very early this year because full moon was actually on the 21st March, Good Friday, and the powers that be decided that that was from when Easter (Sunday) should be calculated. The interesting thing is the Easter – the events of the New Testament – was at the time of Passover and my diary tells me that Passover this year is the 20th April (it also happens to be the next full moon). Did the powers that be decide that that was too late for society? Whatever the answer, Easter was early and early means in the UK the weather is still not good so, yes, we had a smattering of snow yesterday and it has been cold. Also, because Easter is so early, for the first time, it did not coincide with the school “Easter holidays”, the two week break that most schools have at this time of the year. They will be starting in a week’s time. Add to this the signs that we seem to be moving towards a recession and the word is that fewer people have escaped abroad for an Easter break, something that increasing numbers of Britons have been doing in recent years. Bad weather and many people staying in the country produced forecasts of terrible conditions on the roads. Put all these things together and you may possibly have an explanation why it seemed that by Good Friday supermarket shelves were often empty.

It seems that every time we have a holiday weekend – slightly longer than normal weekends – the population moves into ’siege mentality’ and buys and stocks up on food as if there was going to be no tomorrow. It seems that people have been “celebrating Easter” but the signs are that it hasn’t been the Easter of my definition above. No doubt there were a few bodies more in churches, especially the Roman Catholic church who are strong on ritual at this time, but mostly that is not so and around the world life just carries on. Looking for signs of Easter in shops would confuse a visiting alien from another planet. Easter eggs and Easter Bunnies abound but try and buy an Easter greeting card with anything connected with our definition, and you would have a hard job. In fact despite the fact that shops were full of Easter Eggs and Easter Bunnies a few weeks before the event, when it came to the weekend, many shops were sold out. One website that I recently visited declared, “Today, Easter bunny occupies the most dominant position amonst all symbols of Easter“. Funny, I thought it was the Cross, but look in the shops and this outrageous quote is spot on!

When the day arrived the weather was terrible, the streets often empty, and most people – presumably – stayed indoors consuming the vast amounts of food they have cleared off the supermarket shelves! It was by and large a non-Christian Easter. In other words it wasn’t Easter but a replacement feast. So why do non-Christians ‘celebrate’ and feast at this time? Is it a case of grabbing at any opportunity to brighten up otherwise dull lives. We are a very weather conscious people and the weather has been pretty grim recently! But why do parents feel pressurised to go buying lots of expensive chocolate Easter eggs for their children at five times the cost of usual chocolate bars?

It seems that as we become more and more irreligious, we become more and more prey to the pressures of retailers and the whims of business playing on the guilt ridden minds of fractured families. It all goes together. It is also all so depressing. Yesterday, instead of rejoicing over the wonder of Christs resurrection (there was a little of that), I found myself wanting to weep for this nation that has cast aside its Christian heritage and is now adrift in the seas of uncertainty and insecurity.

In my own Bible studies or meditations, which you can find on my corresponding Bible Meditations Shop blog, I am as convinced as every of the historical event we refer to as Easter and the wonder of the person called Jesus Christ, revealed by the resurrection as the unique Son of God, come to reveal God to us and provide a means for our salvation. The real Easter is still as wonderful as ever, which perhaps helps show up even more the terrible, shallow replacement that many are left with. Pilate presenting Jesus to the crown on Good Friday declared, “Behold the man!” We declare, “Behold the egg!” Pilate cynically asked, “What is truth?” with no desire for an answer, and similarly today many copy his apathy.

For a world sunk in weak religion and oppression by foreigners, the truth of Easter Sunday emerged slowly like the sun rising over the horizon, but once it was fully realised, it brought the same transformation to life as the fully risen sun does to the earth. Jesus Christ risen declared that he was indeed the Son of God, a God of incredible love who had walked the earth for three years bringing transformation to life after life. Now it was down to his followers, empowered by his Spirit, who would continue the same work. It also declared that with God nothing is impossible. Where there seems no future, suddenly there is the possibility of a wonderful future. How wonderful! But no Easter means no hope. No Easter means hollow chocolate eggs that are soon gone! How terrible!
  

Struggling with Emotions

I find myself sometimes, to counter the boredom of driving, turning on my car radio and, to avoid the boredom of wall to wall music, tuning to Radio 4, that refuge for middle class, middle aged (and older!) listeners who suggest that ‘content’ is better than pure noise. Thus it has been that twice recently, indicating the time of day when I obviously don’t do anything else, I found myself listening to a writer rambling on about self-centred death. Now I say ’self-centred’ because his whole outlook on life seemed remarkably self-focused and as he talked about his family, it became obvious that they too were remarkably self-orientated. So, it was that even when he contemplated death it seemed remarkably self-centred, and never got to asking the big questions such as, “Is this all there is?” or “What follows?” I spoke of him as rambling because I know I do it sometimes in writing and I recognise it in others. There seemed little point in this rambling because, like a circular ramble in the woods on a Sunday afternoon, it seemed to go nowhere. Along this ramble there seemed to be little sign posts that popped up saying, “I am an atheist. I don’t believe in God.” Perhaps that explained his aimless, self-orientated revelation. I struggled to identify my emotions listening to this aimless filling of the airwaves.

My emotions late on Saturday evening were quite specific, watching Sport Relief, and in particular the Top Gear Team’s contribution to the evening, parodying a Ground Force programme by outrageously devastating Steve Redgrave’s garden. Undoubtedly some of the funniest TV in a long while, shades of the Crazy Gang at work. Laughter was mixed with doubt. Did they really create all that mayhem without the permission of the Redgraves, and was there a secret agreement that we’ll make it good later on? Emotions on the loose were good.

The news about a little girl being found after weeks of police frustration, probably created the most varied mix of emotions of the past week. First there was thankfulness that she had been found. Then there was wondering how it had happened, then there was wondering of a different sort as the details about her family started to come out. Finally emotions were all over the place as there came much media comment about dysfunctional families. Tragically in our permissive and often crazy society today such families are not uncommon. Multiple children from multiple fathers. If we stop and think about these children living in these emotional wildernesses, we’ll  weep. 

And, almost overshadowing everything else, the subject of collapsing banks hit the headlines and the media seemed to wind up the crisis. I suspect for many, worry gave way to confusion. As I watched the  news last night, I was left with a sense that most of the reporters hadn’t a clue about what the significance was of a bank collapsing in the States. I used to teach economics and so I was sitting there thing, so what does that mean, as they details rolled out. The level of commentary was remarkably shallow. Are the various TV companies now giving instant economics courses to their news staff because so far, they don’t look very competent. If you are like me, your response when watching such news reporting, will probably be a mixture of frustration and irritation: “If you say this is so important, tell me the possible practical consequences as they are going to affect me!”

It is an insecure world. Tomorrow I could catch flu or have an accident. Tomorrow some drunk in the street could assault me. I hope these things won’t happen but the truth is we just don’t know what tomorrow will hold.  To cope with the uncertainly many of us retreat into our self-centred ramblings. Some of us retreat into pleasure and laughter to shut out the awfulness of so much of modern life. Some, like those identified in the dysfunctional family syndrome reporting, grab at any friendly body whatever the consequences, regardless of what pain may be caused to others. Some of us watch the cloud of doom over our finances grow ever bigger with a sense of helplessness. Such is life in the twenty first century.

This would all be very depressing if that was the only view of life that is possible. It is the viewpoint of Solomon in jaded old age who wrote, “I have seen all thing things that are done under the sun, all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” (Eccles 1:14). By then, for him, all he had was a godless mentality and it left him feeling jaded. I have been looking again this week at the works of some of the crusading atheists of our time and have been struck by their anger, their hostility and their frustration and it has crossed my mind that they echo Solomon’s sentiments, and that is sad.

I have also been contemplating Easter because we are rushing towards an early Easter Sunday this coming weekend. Jerusalem in the week before this weekend that we will be remembering (well some of us at least), was a hotchpotch of mixed emotions and those emotions seemed to get ramped up more and more until the explosion of ‘Good’ Friday, and then all was quiet. The events of Easter Sunday defied the imagination and caused the greatest reversal of emotions in the whole of history. The BBC is showing their version of the Passion. I have heard rumours or hints that the resurrection may not quite live up to the reality of history, we’ll see. 

Mel Gibson’s The Passion, apart from being a ghastly, emotion numbing horror film, similarly held back at the resurrection. Of course unbelievers or half-believers hold back at this most challenging event in history. Thank goodness that the Bible itself doesn’t hold back. It, unequivocally, declares that he was raised from the dead, proclaiming to all who would hear it, that he was and is the living Son of God, and because he is, we can look back on the wonder of the Gospels with eyes of hope – God had come, God has shown that He loves us and accepts us in all of our self-centred need, and that He’s here for us today. 

So life may be uncertain, life may appear tumultuous, life may appear painful as we go our own foolish self-centred ways, but there is another way and He is there – as always – with His arms of love out to us, to draw us to Himself, to bring peace to us, healing to us, forgiveness to us, and the possibility of loving order that brings sense, sanity and security to our lives in an otherwise often crazy world. Have a good Easter!

 

Confused Minds

I am constantly surprised whenever I come across those optimistic atheists who get upset by the Bible’s concept of Sin. Oh no, they say, we the human race are evolving and getting better and better all the time. We have no need of God, we have no need of a Saviour like your Jesus, we’re all right. I really wonder sometimes which world these people are living in.
    
As we watched a recent episode of ‘ER’ recently my wife commented, “They can’t help but focus on the fact that sin has bad consequences, can they!” That programme like so many ’soaps’ shows again and again that “a man reaps what he sows” and his ’sowing’ is frequently stupid. The writer of the Proverbs in the Bible wrote “a man who commits adultery lacks judgment, whoever does so destroys himself,” yet adultery (portrayed so often in these soaps) is so common in modern Western societies and the fruits are so easy to see – yet no one says, “This behavious is stupid!” 
   
 The British government recently indicated that it might be thinking about getting British children to swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen and the British people. Any same person would know that such a thing was likely to create a hostile reaction – and it did. Again and again we find a government coming up with suggestions that any sane person knows is not going to happen. Stupidity is an outworkign of sin.

This self-centred, godlessness is so clearly seen reaping disasterous fruit in our society today and yet still vain optimism reigns. The truth of the Gospel is that good news has to be proceeded by bad news. We need to recognise our own foolishness before we can see our need and the wonder of God’s provision to meet that need. Read the papers, watch your TV. They are full of it. It’s time to live in reality.

All in the Mind (7)

I had an experience the other day that set me thinking about unbelief – the inability of our minds to cope with things in the spiritual realm that are unfamiliar to us. Actually it was an experience that was about an experience. I found myself telling a group of (largely) non-Christian young people about an experience I once had where God clearly spoke to me  and the outcome proved the reality of the experience. It doesn’t matter what actually happened (we’ll omit that for the sake of space) sufficient to say that my listeners conveyed the recognition that the outcome was either a staggering coincidence or was the result of God speaking. That was the experience about an experience.

Now shortly after telling this account, a situation arose where we all appeared in difficulties. As I prayed I sensed that the Lord said he would resolve the difficulty (something right out of our control) by a set time in a little over two hours time. Well, to everyone else’s surprise, the circumstances were resolved and they were resolved to the exact minute.

Now again, if you are of a sceptical nature, you may say, “Oh, just a big coincidence!” which is what the non-reaction of these young people conveyed. But why this scepticism? If there is a God and if He does communicate with us for our good, wouldn’t you think that any sensible person would grab at such a chance to ‘hear’? What is it that makes us want to reject my account of what happened and opt for ‘coincidence’?

Is it perhaps that we doubt the three ‘if’ things above – that there is a God, that He does communicate, and it is for our good? Is it perhaps that we are often too lazy to even think about these sorts of things and so we shut them out rather than have our comfort disturbed. I came across the following quote some while ago:

The main difficulty with most secularists is to persuade them to examine the case for the supernatural. Cannon J.B.Phillips  recalls in the Ring of Truth ‘hundreds of conversations with people, many of them of higher intellectual calibre than myself, who quite obviously had no idea what Christianity is about.’ He concluded that ‘they knew virtually nothing’ about the New Testament. The Resurrection, the most important event in human history, is politely and quietly by-passed. For it is not as though the evidence had been examined and found unconvincing; it had simply never been examined.

The point being made was that most people can’t be bothered to examine the evidence. It is almost like they have been put to sleep as far as truth is concerned.  How terrible! Unbelief is not based on facts; it is based on wilful ignorance. Again, how terrible!