Jelly Beans and Bunnies

I have a problem. One of the heirlooms entrusted to me is a ceramic Easter Bunny, complete with pastel lederhosen, pulling a ceramic two wheeled cart. It’s a candy dish decoration for the pagan celebration of fertility, better known as Easter. We tend to do a lot more with the pagan part of this holiday than with the resurrection of our Lord. I guess it is more fun to have egg hunts and chocolate bunnies than crosses and cemeteries, torture and death. Even in church we tend to pay a lot more attention to lilies and whoopee-doo than empty tombs. Most people don’t come to church on Thursday or Friday. They just skip to Sunday.



Anyway, I want to put out the heirloom. Easter is coming up, just a few days from now. But that’s just it. Those few days are why it happened. How do we decorate now? Deny it? Or do we have one room for mourning and the other with the ceramic bunny as a center piece?



Sometimes I feel my life is like that. If I pay attention to the suffering of the world, how do I find time to giggle? Or shall I live in denial so we can decorate and celebrate? Maybe it’s appropriate that Easter is crammed up against the cross. The victory of life rising out of the worst and most painful we can come up with. Maybe that’s Easter’s meaning. ‘The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.’



Yup, I’ve got a problem, if you want to look at it like that. Maybe it’s more of an opportunity. No denial. No surrender. Tonight, we’ll celebrate the Last Supper, betrayal, death. But the bunny’s coming out. Take that darkness.