Where There’s Blayze

We are fast approaching another great Christian holiday and similar questions seem to occupy my mind as they did with Christmas. Has this holiday become too rooted in society to the point where its true meaning is lost in translation? This is in many ways a  far more pressing question then that for Christmas. As Christmas approaches the Christian presence is felt quite strongly. The Churches tend to get a rare influx of people coming in from the community because they recognise the history of that particular holiday. We tend to see images and decorations of the stable popping up around the country. Around Christmas I even found that my Sky box that I used for the TV gave me the option to download a background of the baby Jesus in the stable. This only goes to show that even in the secular world there is still an appreciation of what Christmas is meant to be about. At that time I had numerous places asking me to come in and talk about the true meaning of Christmas. Despite all this Christmas is not the most significant point for Christians to focus on. Most would argue that the greatest time that we look to is not Jesus’ birth but in fact his death and resurrection. This is supported within the Bible as well. The four Gospels that look to the life of Jesus all mention the death and resurrection, but only one of them refers to the birth of Jesus, the book of Matthew. Many round this country wear a cross necklace to show their faith and show how they believe Jesus died on the cross for them. They do not wear a necklace depicting a stable, mostly because they know that Christians tend to focus mostly on the fact that Jesus came and died for our sins. This is exactly the thing we are coming to celebrate now, along with many other things, and yet I have not seen that same recognition being given to the Christian meaning of Easter as I did with Christmas. Maybe I am looking in the wrong places or just have not yet been exposed to it. One of the main reasons why I think that is, is due to how the schools have reacted to this holiday. At Christmas I was invited into the school non stop to help teach children about the true meaning of Christmas and so that the Church could have its place in the school for this religious holiday. As we approach Easter I have only had one school invite me in to talk about the true meaning of Easter and how all of that relates to a rabbit and some eggs. They invited me in mostly because they wanted to find a slot for me. There was not the same desire as there was at Christmas. This is not necessarily a bad thing that it is not as commercialised, I mean why should it be? It is for those who are in the Church presumably, for those who believe that Jesus was the son of God and that he rose from the dead. But I have been thinking about why Easter is not as celebrated in this country with the same attention as Christmas and why indeed we look to rabbits and eggs instead of Jesus.

Why the rabbit and the eggs?

I feel like the most pressing question I have in regards to all of this is why do we buy chocolate eggs? Why do we make decorations of a rabbit? I had this question in my head for a great many years growing up and it struck me that not many people really knew the answer to this question, be they Christians or atheists. If I am honest I think most people do not know the answer to this. Just think for the past two hundred years in Britain children have been given chocolate eggs for Easter. Around eighty million chocolate eggs are eaten each year in Britain. Some parents even tell their children that the Easter bunny has hidden chocolate eggs and they have to go and find them. So, in light of all this confusion, I thought I would write down the reason why over time the holiday celebrating the death and resurrection of Christ has become synonymous with eggs and rabbits. Well a lot of it is down to symbolism. In ancient times the rabbit was seen as a symbol of new life, this is also true of eggs and chicks. Christians believe that Jesus is alive and has new life after death and this is why eggs have become such an integral part of the Easter holiday. But this tradition of giving people a chocolate egg for Easter is not all that has caught on. In America children build Easter nests out of sticks and leaves so that the Easter bunny can leave them Easter eggs. In some countries egg rolling is a popular Easter game. In scotland, some people have great fun rolling painted eggs down steep hills, I did hear somewhere that this was to symbolise the rock that covered Jesus’ tomb rolling away. In Germany the people even go so far as to decorate trees and bushes with Easter eggs.  What this does show is that the focus on the Easter bunny and eggs is not just present in our country but in most of the western world. It seems that all of these practices in their own way can be traced back to celebrating the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. All of them are symbols of new life and many of them are supposedly based on actual biblical events, such as the rolling of the stone. So these commercialised images and practices involving bunnies and eggs are related to the very thing we are celebrating, but does it help to have them? As I said, most people are unaware of the connection that these practices have to the Biblical story. I myself only really figured it out during my second year at Bible college. I went to a Church of England primary school and went on tp get an A in my GCSE R.E. and yet I still had no idea how the Easter bunny and eggs linked with the story of Jesus. I knew that Christians saw Easter as a time to think about Jesus but I myself assumed that the bunny and chocolate eggs were a clever comercial tool used to sell chocolate eggs. I had no idea the two were rooted in the same meaning. Is this why we see an increase of Church attendance at Christmas and not really at Easter? Is this why so many children grow up more confused about this holiday then actually knowing its true meaning?

Is this an important holiday?

As I prepare to go into a local school to talk about the true meaning of Easter and hand out leaflets to the local community to outline what we as a Church are doing to celebrate this holiday, I have to wonder is this holiday that important? Is it worth me going to these places to try and translate the importance of this holiday to those of the school and local community? The quick answer is yes. Of course it is. It is this very part of Jesus’ life that the Christian faith is based on, if you remove this part of the story then you remove Christianity. There are two other major world faiths that look to the Old Testament as a sacred text (Islam, Judaism) so the Old Testament is not unique to our faith. All of Paul’s letters in the Bible were written after he had a vision of the risen Christ, so without his death and resurrection you would not have Paul’s letters. Without Jesus’ death and resurrection Jesus’ ministry loses its grand purpose. Don’t get me wrong Jesus whole life had meaning and purpose, his parables, his teachings, his miracles and even more importantly his relationships with others all carry significant importance to Christians in how we live and how we view the world. But had Jesus not died on the cross then he would not have fulfilled what the Old Testament had prophesied, and therefore not be solidified in people’s minds as the son of God. There is a fantastic book called the case for Christ (and also a movie) that is about how Lee Strobel, an award winning investigative reporter, came to believe in God. To sum it up for you his wife becomes a Christian and he does not understand this and thinks it is all a load of rubbish. So he sets out to do the only thing he knows how to do, he tries to gather all the evidence he can to show his wife that a belief in Jesus is stupidity. Someone tells him to investigate the death and resurrection of Jesus and tells him that if you can disprove that, then the whole of the Christian faith crumbles. In looking for all this information he comes to the inescapable conclusion that Christ did die and did rise again. But he was quite right, the very foundation of what it is to believe in Jesus is to believe that he died on the cross and rose again on the third day. People don’t set out to disprove the birth of Jesus, because they realise that this is not the focal point of our faith. What Jesus did on the cross has also inspired much study and discussion on what it truly meant. we have atonement theories, which are all theories of why Jesus had to die and what it achieved. Christ dying on the cross has also brought about much debate on eschatology (the study of what happens after we die), because of what Jesus did do we all go to Heaven? Or was that forgiveness for those who are willing to accept it? Naturally I could write a whole series of blogs on those questions and what I believe the Biblical answer to be, but nonetheless it shows how much of the Christian faith looks to this one event. Part of me thinks that as Christians we should be showing more excitement towards this holiday for all to see, after all it is an exciting time. We are not only looking to the past at when Jesus did die for us, but we are looking to the future for when Jesus will come again. I once heard the comedian Billy Connolly talk about Christians, he said that he took his grandson to a Christian festival somewhere in America where all these floats were coming down the streets. His grandchild said to him, ‘who is that?’ pointing at the float of Jesus on the cross. Billy replied saying, ‘that’s Jesus’, his grandson was mortified and shouted, ‘THE BABY JESUS?’ Billy says it was the most sincere religious cry he had ever heard, he said that if he had Christians showing that much emotion he would believe them. Naturally this is a comedian’s story during a show, but I think he has a point. I get really disheartened when I go into a Church were we have to read a prayer off a piece of paper and everyone sounds half dead. It’s not the words on the paper that’s the issue. The words are about how Jesus died for our sins and how he is going to return again and we will be with him in glory and yet people read it in a manner that leads you to believe that they are bored. If I was not already a Christian and heard people praying like that, then I would not believe in God, by the sounds of it they don’t really believe what they are reading. If you believe that the son of God died for your sins and that He is coming back to share eternity with us then surely that is something to get excited about? We should show that excitement, that impact in our lives, that faith. I go into schools to show them how happy I am to know Jesus. To show them all the wondrous things that God has done in my life and is doing in my life. The teachers all seem really shocked afterwards, they always say to me, ‘you spoke with such passion.’ It makes them question why i’m saying it, why is this making him so happy and passionate. I tell them why, because I have a relationship with the risen Christ and I am happy and excited by that. For all those reading this blog, go out and show your passion for God, go out and show your love and excitement for what we are celebrating. Show them the true meaning of Easter.

Promotion to Glory

I want to end my blog by talking about someone who did show excitement in his life. Someone who was devoted to God and always sought to do whatever he believed God’s will was. For those of you who do not know, my fiance’s dad Howard Evans passed away on the 10th of February this year. I was privileged to be able to attend his funeral and his celebration of life service. What stood out to me was the stories that people told of him. How he constantly looked to others before himself, how his humour could brighten peoples day and how he represented God through his own life. I did not know Howard for very long, but every encounter I had with him was always a pleasant one. I have never had someone compliment me so much and take such an interest in my life and ministry. He would always make it very clear that he would help me in anyway he could. He would leap to my defense when he heard about how I was doing at work and how people would not always be very happy with what I was doing. He was someone whose faith was so strong that it helped affirm my faith. I will always be grateful to him for all that he did and for how he raised my fiance to be the woman she is today. Becky is a strong, faithful and devout woman with a wicked sense of humour and I don’t need to look very hard to see where she got it from. In the Salvation army when you die it is called a ‘promotion to Glory.’ I can think of no one more deserving of such a promotion, to be placed with the risen Christ. If more Christians were like Howard Evans then we would not have a decline in the Church. We would have a true Church family centred with love, grace, knowledge and most of all God.