“Grandpa, I don’t really feel like going to church today…” I observed over breakfast one childhood Easter Sunday, with my eyes fixed on the pile of Easter Eggs in front of me.  Later that morning, from the pulpit in Chelmsford Cathedral, my Grandpa opened his sermon with my words:  words that became immortalised in one of those frequently recounted family stories.  It was, as far as I know, the first and last occasion when I inspired a preacher of God’s word. It was, however, neither the first nor the last occasion when I didn’t really feel like going to church on a Sunday morning.  So why have I kept going all these years?  What drew me into faith?

Christianity, like most religions, is full of stories and symbols, because it tries to speak about the heart of the human condition.  This is something that we can’t write about or talk about or understand in precise, scientific language.  We have to use picture language:  stories and symbols.  At one level these seem barely adequate, merely the best we can do at describing the indescribable and at knowing the unknowable.  At another level they provide an immensely rich language.  Once you have understood precise, scientific language there is no more to be discovered.  With well written stories and carefully selected symbols, however, there is always more to be discovered.  You can keep coming back to them and as you grow and develop what you find in the stories and symbols grows and develops too.

Looking back (if I can look back at something that I know only from the telling of the story and not from my own memories of the events) I would say that the pile of symbols in front of me that Easter morning was a stumbling block.  I couldn’t look past the Easter Eggs to see what was really important, which is understandable at that age.  I’m not against symbols.  In fact I quite like symbols.  They can be useful reminders of what we hold to be important, useful reminders of what we believe.  As I have heard from various pulpits over the years the symbolism of Easter Eggs can be interpreted in many ways, including:

• eggs bring new life and therefore represent the new life of Jesus’ resurrection
• eggs look a bit like the stone that was rolled away from the entrance of the tomb on the first Easter morning
• Easter Eggs, being hollow, are empty like Jesus’ tomb on the first Easter morning

As a Christian, I may ponder on this symbolism as I consume my chocolate eggs, although, to be honest, I generally view them as merely a secular (though pleasurable) add on to a religious festival, rather like Christmas presents.  At the end of the day, they are just chocolate eggs.  The danger with symbols is that we place too much importance on them and come to believe that they have an intrinsic significance of their own, rather than just being a reminder of what we already believe and a way of communicating with others who also believe.  We might then expect people who don’t share our beliefs to see in our symbols the same ideas that we see in them.  This is the trap that, as I see it, the Church of England fell into when, for understandable reasons, it seized the opportunity provided by the media storm over the National Trust’s “Chocolate Egg Hunts” to try and remind people of the true meaning of Easter.  I doubt many non-Christians have looked at a chocolate egg and as a result come to believe in the resurrection of the Son of God.  With symbols, it is not generally the case that seeing is believing, but rather that believing is seeing.  So, although I like symbols and find them useful, they are not what drew me into faith.

I was fortunate to be brought up in a Christian family and go to a Christian school and so regularly heard stories read from the Bible.  As a teenager, I started to see that that somewhere amid these curious stories that I didn’t fully understand was a message about a better way of living than what I saw out there in the world around me.  This is what drew me into faith.  However much I didn’t fully understand the stories, however much I didn’t quite grasp the symbols, however much I saw the pain of the world repeated inside the church, however much I didn’t really feel like going to church that morning, I kept going because I knew, deep down, that there was a deeper truth to be found there about the human condition.  There was a better way to live.  And for all those times when it was hard to see how the better way could possibly work, how “loving your enemy and praying for those who persecute you” could lead to anything other than greater personal suffering, there was a special story.  A story of a man who suffered the very worst that mankind could inflict:  betrayal, injustice, loneliness, torture and a public, humiliating, agonising death.  A story of a man who endured all of this with love.  A story of a man who, on the first Easter morning, rose again.  A story that says that death did not have the last say.  A story that tells me that although, two thousand years of progress later, mankind still inflicts the worst that it can, this will not have the last say.  A story that refreshes me every year, gives me hope every day and keeps me going in the belief that there is always a better way.

Wishing you all a very happy and holy Easter.

Alleluia!  Christ is risen!