What does Easter mean to people nowadays? I found myself asking this question when I was walking through my local cemetery one day during Holy Week, between the hope of Palm Sunday, and the despair of Good Friday. Passing by a new grave I was confronted by what, to me, was a truly bizarre sight – although I doubt if the people responsible thought of it that way, if they thought about it at all! My apologies if anyone here was responsible! I’m sure it was all done with love. So what was it?
It being a new grave, there was no headstone. But there was a simple wooden cross. This is a symbol of Christ’s suffering and death on Good Friday, although being an empty cross – as opposed to a crucifix – it can also be seen as a symbol of the Resurrection. But there was nothing odd about this. It was what was at the foot of cross that struck me as strange. There among the wreaths and flowers, propped against the cross, were two blue rabbits! They were soft toys, of course, but it was a strange contrast to the moving image of the weeping women at the foot of the cross in the gospel accounts. I don’t suppose for a moment that putting the rabbits there was an act of conscious mockery, but it made me think nonetheless!
Quite why the mourners put the rabbits there I have no idea. Perhaps they had some special significance for the family. Perhaps it was just part of the current craze for putting soft toys on graves and other places associated with a death. Or perhaps, it being nearly Easter, someone just thought that the Easter Bunny should be there!
Did it occur to them that the Easter Bunny is – or was – a much more potent symbol than it is usually given credit for these days? Probably not! In its origins, the Easter Bunny was actually a hare – an animal surrounded by superstition and folklore, not least because of its strange behaviour in springtime. This is when hares, standing on their hind legs like human beings, seem to ‘box’ in what is a sort of mating ritual. Hence the association with new life. But hares were also seen as animals of ill-omen, with sight of one foretelling a death. Here, as elsewhere in the complex of Easter traditions, the pagan melds with Christian beliefs about the death of Christ. Hares thus acquired a reputation for being linked to witchcraft and dark supernatural forces and were sometimes persecuted as a result. There was even a belief that hares had to be shot with silver bullets because they were shape-shifting witches in disguise!
The hare is a much longer resident of these islands than the introduced rabbit, which the Normans brought with them. Once the far less mysterious rabbit arrived and became familiar it both inherited and diluted beliefs previously associated with the hare – hence the Easter Bunny. Today, if it isn’t a soft toy or a greeting card adornment, the Easter Bunny is most usually made of chocolate. In this, though, it usually comes second to the Easter egg, another modern descendant of an ancient fertility symbol.
The egg, for obvious reasons, has always been a symbol of fertility and new life in the spring. And this was when the pagan Anglo-Saxons and other Germanic peoples celebrated the festival of their springtime goddess, Eostre. She thus gave her name to the Christian festival which in time succeeded hers. Easter eggs are a great symbol of this mash-up. Symbolic of Eostre and spring and part of pagan traditions, the Easter egg was taken over by Christians. Hard-boiled and decorated real eggs were the first Easter eggs for pagans and Christians, but Christians dyed them red to symbolise Christ’s blood and his death on the cross.
But to go back to the scene I saw in the cemetery. Even if the people involved were unaware of the symbolism and tradition of the Easter Bunny, they must have known that the cross itself is a Christian symbol, regardless of their own religious beliefs, if any. The cross at the head of a grave symbolises Resurrection, the triumph of Christ over death on Easter Day. For Christians down the centuries it has also symbolised the hope of their own Resurrection on Judgement Day, when the rising sun will greet them and re-open their long-closed eyes.
I don’t know how many Christians still believe this literally, but the care taken over graves by non-Christians as well as Christians – suggests that the status and fate of the body still matters. But even physical Resurrection may be seen differently now. Once it was about being raised to face Judgement at the sound of the Last Trump, but today it is seen as the reintegration of the body with the ongoing life of the Earth. The body continues, rising to eternal life in the new forms given it by nature,
But what of the soul, that element of our being which animates us as human beings but which vanishes when the body dies? When Jesus died, if the gospel accounts are at all accurate, his friends, followers and family were overcome by sorrow and desolation. Whatever Jesus may or may not have said, when the terrible reality of his cruel death hit home, there was no glib belief that he wasn’t really dead or that he would come back to life. Some of them had seen him die, even heard that desperate, despairing cry from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27: 46, Mark 15:34). Some had seen his broken body laid in a cold tomb. As he had said himself, “It is finished” (John 19:30). But it wasn’t.
Jesus had died. What actually became of his body we don’t know, because the so-called Resurrection accounts are too contradictory for that: from the fearful amazement of the women at the empty tomb (Mark 16: 1-8) to the lyrical encounter of Mary Magdalen in the garden on Easter morning (John 20:11-18); from the authenticating experience of “doubting Thomas” behind closed doors (John 20: 24-29) to the strange meeting on the Emmaus road (Luke 24; 13-35); from the charge to the disciples on the mountain (Matthew 28: 16-20) to the barbecue breakfast that Jesus shared with them on the beach after a night’s fishing (John 21: 1-13). Even when couched in bodily terms, they clearly relate to diverse spiritual experiences, even to mythological constructs arising from the fervent faith of early Christians. But the truth is that the Jesus community survived his death. It survived to become the continuing body of his spirit, the foundation of the tradition which not only kept his teaching alive but which spread it through time and space to show us how to be truly human.
Jesus is a spiritual reality in this darkened and suffering world, bringing comfort, inspiration and hope – not by magic, but by witnessing to a way of living that redeems our kind from the false values that would otherwise overwhelm us. It is up to us to respond to his call and his example, and so remain a continuing influence for good ourselves. When we do, and love triumphs in our lives as individuals and as community, then there is the soul’s healing and the spirit’s renewal. There is the Resurrection.
Cliff Reed
Easter 2025
(CMR160425)
Ipswich Unitarian Meeting House 