Why Easter is the best week of the year

As you might have noticed, it is Easter this week! So I’d like to take five or five minutes of your time to share why I – and about two billion other humans going about the place just now – think Easter is the best week of the year. And it’s got something to do with a special Christian ritual called Communion.

Communion, at its heart, is about as simple a ritual as you can get. You get together with a bunch of other people. You share some bread, and you share some wine.

And it’s because of this ritual that so many people regard Easter as the best week of the year. I want to explain to you why that is, and more than that, I want to convince you that Easter is the best week of the year for you, too!

If you’ve passed by The Hub at the top of Johnstone Terrace here in Edinburgh recently, you might have notice the banner which is draped over the railings just now – reading, ‘RITUALS THAT UNITE US.’

Now, that might seem like an odd idea. But wouldn’t that be great, if we actually had a ritual which could unite us? Because the world could surely do with a bit more unity right now. The world seems so divided, and sometimes it seems like there’s no hope for real unity.

We can see that in our politics. We’re divided about foreign policy, about taxation policy, about trade policy, about environmental policy.

And the conflicts that we have in this country seem pretty trivial when we remember the conflicts that are playing out in other parts of the world right now. In Israel and Gaza. In Sudan. In Russia and Ukraine.

And there’s plenty of conflict happening on the small scale, too. Often it’s the smallest-scale conflicts which hurt us the most deeply. Your landlord pushes you around. That friend you trusted like no-one else in the world lets you down. The partner or spouse you loved like no-one else in the world – you end up fighting.

It’s possible that you’re going to be reading this right now with a heavy heart because of a broken relationship in their life. And doesn’t that hurt more than anything else we know?

When the world is groaning so heavily under the weight of conflict, and some banner on The Hub tells us a ritual can unite us, that seems so out of proportion to the scale of the problem, doesn’t it? What can a ritual do? A bit of old superstition? An excuse to divide people, maybe – what can a ritual do to unite us?

Well, two thousand years ago, a man had a meal with his friends. Together, they shared a meal of bread and wine – which, in that time and place, was the most ordinary meal imaginable.

And yet, in that most ordinary event imaginable, something was happening which was totally unimaginable. As this man, Jesus, shared the elements of this meal, he made some extraordinary statements about what he was doing: ‘take, eat, this is my body’ – ‘drink this, all of you; this is my blood of the new covenant.’ (The word ‘covenant’ means a promise.)

He told them he wasn’t just giving them bread and wine, he was giving his body and his blood, and a promise.

Before Jesus ate another meal, he was flogged and nailed to a cross. His blood was spilt and his body broken, even to death.

And yet, that wasn’t the end of the Easter story. Because three days later, mourners turned up at Jesus’ tomb to pay their respects, and found the tomb empty, the stone rolled away. Then they became the first of crowds of incredulous eyewitnesses to see Jesus, the same Jesus who was killed on a cross, alive.

Some magic trick, right? But this matters a hell of a lot more than just some magic trick. Because Jesus became the first person in history to prove that you really can both have your cake and eat it. He gave his life, and lived! As a result, we can have his life and our own. We can join with Jesus through the ritual of Communion which he established, and thereby, through Jesus’ body, join together with everyone else who takes part in that ritual, as one body. Then we can start living our brand-new, full-fat, original-recipe life overflowing with generosity where we too can both give our life to others and enjoy it ourselves. Indeed, Jesus taught us and showed us that it’s precisely by giving our lives to others that we get to truly live ourselves.

This is why, in spite of all the division which persists in the world today, two billion people regard this week as the best week of the year. Two billion people, from every nation on Earth, speaking thousands of languages, of every age and culture and gender and race, who defy the divisions of this world to insist on joining together as one body in Jesus.

Because Jesus’ new covenant, his promise to all of us, is that in an apparently hopelessly divided world, there exists real hope for unity. And that’s why Easter is the best week of the year.