The Tribune

By Rev Canon S Sebastian Campbell

History

The Easter season is the oldest in the Christian calendar. The season’s English name, Easter, is derived from Eostre, a Teutonic goddess of spring, who gave her name to what corresponds to the month of April.

The whole season of Easter is a festival season. It is the heart of our faith; we Christians are an Easter people. It is regrettable that sometimes we divide Lent and Holy Week and Good Friday from Easter, the essential unity of the crucifixion and the resurrection also tends to be broken. We must always remember that the latter completes the former.

The resurrection throws the magnificent light of understanding over Christ’s life and death. The resurrection is Christ’s victory over death and so accomplishes our salvation, which was begun with the incarnation and sealed by the crucifixion. Without the resurrection none of the rest, not Christmas, not the Lord’s Supper, especially not the crucifixion, not any of these would have meaning. Without this event and the mystery it revealed assumed so important a position in the life of the church. Little time elapsed before Christians habitually observed Sunday as the Lord’s Day, because a Sunday had been the first day of their new life – their new beginning. That is why they set it apart and made it an occasion for coming together to celebrate the mystery and to partake in Holy Communion by which Christ’s presence was made known.

The early Christians also associated baptism closely with Easter because they saw a parallel with the death and resurrection of Christ. The immersion under the water became a symbolic death and the reemergence a symbolic resurrection. Preparation for baptism at Easter became the basis for the development of Lent. After all, it is our baptism which enables us to share in the results of our Lord’s victory.

Significance

Eggs are connected with Easter because they represent new life and thus the resurrection. For Easter, to be of any significance to us, it must challenge us to a new life and the resurrection at both a personal and societal level. The proverbial spit has gone in the wind and is being blown back in all our faces.

The new life and resurrection must by necessary first be realised in our homes. The Bible has mandated we live in families; basic to any family is a husband and a wife who then become the procreators of children. Therefore, in every family there must be a resident father and mother. Anything else is not family; we cannot continue to go up in the face of God, disobey His commands, and then expect His blessings when we have already misconstrued His teachings.

All of our leaders, both spiritual and political must campaign feverishly for the return of morality and therefore a new release of life in decency in our society. We must urge our government to enforce the unwritten moral code for those in public office. Our hypocrisy cries out from the ground to us. It’s absolutely ridiculous to have leaders making ‘multi families’, with a barrage of illegitimate children and think they have moral authority to lead. The 1,000 babies born to teenagers last year can be directly blamed on our double standards; our children see the hypocrisy of their unmarried parents having children, and their unmarried teachers being pregnant, and they imitate them. We will not lower the number of babies until we address our hypocrisies without simultaneously creating new ones. A resurrection calls for sacrifice and death.

We have much work to do, before new life can come out of our grave yard of despair. For years, I’ve been advocating for youth centres to be set up in every district of our country. Maybe in a combined effort between church, government and other agencies. Our approach to this crisis must be intentional. To date, we are far from intentionality; the minuscule success we might see happens all by chance. These centres ought to be operated by trained youth/community leaders. Further, they ought to be able to employ many of our older generation who can work with our children and pass on to them our Bahaman values and culture. The many unfathered children in our midst along with the TV parenting and the absentee mothers, who are out trying to make ends meet on two and three menial jobs, mandate we as our society must fill a gap. These centres will be an extended home, doing on the most part that which was done for many of us in our homes in ages past. We are dragging our feet and not being relevant to the times. Now is the time. On the most part we already have buildings in our communities that can probably be converted to such centres. However, dollars and cents can never be an issue in social redemption, for if we fail to spend money on the front side of life, we will spend it on the back side of this same life. We have a choice.

As an Easter people, we know there is always good news for we can change ourselves and society for the better. Easter gives us hope, hope for a better life. We live with assurance of forgiveness if we are honest with ourselves and our relationship with God, we can bring new life and hope out of our personal grave yards of despair and pass this alleluia of praise to society, for which we are responsible to Christianise.