There was controversy recently when Cadburys, the chocolate manufacturers, were said to have dropped the word Easter from their seasonal chocolate eggs. There is irony in this if it is true as John Cadbury, founder of the firm, was a religious man, known for his pacifism and charitable works. But perhaps it is no bad thing for Christians to reclaim Easter for what it is, a declaration of hope in a troubled world rather than being used as a prop for a commercial product.
The Easter hope is not man made; it is not derived from a vague human hope of survival after death. Easter is God-given but it is meaningless without an understanding of what went before in Holy Week and in particular on Good Friday: evil is confronted and defeated, love overcomes hate, suffering and death are overcome. If this is true then it has huge implications for our understanding of our own lives and their challenges.
Understandably, we are tempted to despair when confronted with the complexities of life, the worrying situation the world is in right now and, of course, our own personal anxieties and fears. We are tempted to lose heart, to cry out “my God my God why have you forsaken us”. We wonder if God is real or have we just lost touch with him. It is certainly not easy at times to find him in the confused cynicism of the modern world.
The Christian faith, however, insists that the God we think we have lost is revealed to us in the pitiful figure of Jesus exposed to public ridicule on a cross. This is not easy to take in, as St Paul well knew: “We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” We find it difficult because we humans look at Holy Week and can only see failure. God sees it differently and in the event we know as the resurrection reveals that what we thought to be failure is in fact a triumph. To those who say “Not possible,” Jesus says: “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Tomorrow’s epistle reading begins: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.”
Easter is about a living hope, a hope that is contemporary and real for the present moment, whatever the circumstances of our lives. This we see in the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor, one of the great Christians of the 20th century. He opposed the Nazi regime in Germany during the second World War but did so initially in a quiet and non-violent way. It is believed, however, that eventually he gave tacit support to an attempt to remove Hitler from power. He was imprisoned and eventually sentenced to death. Shortly before his execution he was asked by his fellow prisoners to hold a service for them. It was a strange request given the circumstances but he agreed and gave an address based on those opening words from tomorrow’s epistle.
Those present recalled how he encouraged his fellow prisoners, Christians, atheists and communists, to look forward thankfully and hopefully to the future. One of them later said that “he touched the hearts of all of us”. Shortly afterwards he was led away. The prison doctor saw him kneeling in his prison clothes shortly before his execution in deep prayer to God. He wrote: “The devotion and evident conviction of being heard that I saw in the prayer of this intensely captivating man moved me to the depths.”
The Methodist theologian Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki understood what Bonhoeffer not only believed but lived when she wrote: “The edges of God are tragedy; the depths of God are joy, beauty, resurrection, life. Resurrection answers crucifixion; life answers death.”