The Fish Net
Boston Presbyterian Church
Easter 2013
Dear Friends,
	One of the most fascinating things about our Bible Study Group sessions are the tangents; how one thing leads to another, and before we know it we are no longer on topic yet the discussion is fascinating.  At a recent session we went off on such a tangent; we were discussing Abraham and his role in the story of salvation and somehow the subject of the Easter Bunny came up.  Where had the Easter Bunny ever come from anyhow; after all there is no mention of him in the Bible?  The answer is to be found over a thousand years ago.
	Before the arrival of Christianity, the Anglo-Saxons worshipped a fertility goddess named Eostre in the early spring, and Eostre’s symbol was the rabbit because of the rabbit’s high reproductive rate.  When the missionaries arrived in England they had a choice; they could either try and stamp out this pagan belief altogether or they could Christianize it.  They chose to do the latter.  The name “Eostre” became “Easter,” the celebration of the resurrection.  The Easter Bunny came to symbolize new life; the resurrection life.  And as for the eggs?
	They too represented new life; the chick emerging from the shell symbolized Jesus’ emergence from the tomb.  Perhaps it was only inevitable that the rabbit and egg came together over 500 years ago with the Easter Bunny delivering eggs early Easter morning!  Now some Christians, in light of its pagan origins, want to ban the bunny altogether, while for others the rabbit is a harmless and even integral part of our celebration.  Personally I think the custom of the egg-delivering bunny is harmless and can even be a source of great fun, thinking back to my own children ransacking the house early Easter morning before we all got ready and headed off to church.  Having said that though, we should not and must not let the bunny or anything else for that matter distract us or take centre stage.  Easter was, is and always will be about the resurrection and all that that means: “Christ is risen, we are risen!”  Indeed perhaps the wonderful words of Charles Wesley’s Easter hymn captures the meaning best:
				Vain the stone, the watch, the seal;
					Christ hath burst the gates of hell;
				Death in vain forbids His rise;
					Christ hath opened Paradise.
				Lives again our glorious King:
					Where, O death, is now thy sting?
				Once He died our souls to save;
					Where thy victory, O grave?

	Wishing you a most blessed Easter!		
Shawn