Category: Easter

Don’t make waves?

It was 50 years ago today on 4th May 1972 that the Greenpeace Movement was formed, taking over a fledgling anti-nuclear protest group known as ‘Don’t make a wave Committee’ – a name it had given itself based upon the fear that an atomic blast would create a giant wave that could swamp West Coast cities in America.

A tidal wave

From being a radical action group, which had been the thorn in many politicians’ sides across the western world, many of the values of Greenpeace have been recognized, praised and absorbed into our way of thinking today as we’ve become more conscious not only of nuclear threats but of more general damage inflicted on our planet and compromising its future survival.

Waves of injustice

I would dare to suggest that in all manner of ways we need to revive the former tagline but make it a positive instead to: ‘Let’s make a wave.’ We should as people be standing out against all kinds of injustice and imbalances in society and be ‘waving’ and ‘flagging these up’, and not least things that are Green and involve Peace. We have seen over recent weeks, all too many scorched earth campaigns of destruction which have left vast swathes of Ukrainian territory devoid of anything green and inhabitable and shattered any peace that once existed.

Shockwaves from Easter

From a Christian perspective, however, what the Easter message encourages us to do is to make ‘huge waves’ in spreading the good news that Christ has brought through his resurrection. His disciples were huddled together in a ‘bunker’ underground, frightened by the shockwaves of Jesus’ death, and looked anything but green and peaceful. What was their future? How would they cope with the maelstrom of feeling from both Romans and the Jewish leaders in the aftermath of such cruel vindictiveness?  Jesus appeared in front of them and simply said, ‘Peace be with you’ and invited them to see his hands and side as proof of his triumph over death. He even asked them to produce a piece of fish for him to eat, to dispel myths that he was just a ghost. From this time, Christ equipped his followers to go out and proclaim the Good News, and once filled with his promised Spirit at Pentecost to turn the world order upside down, beginning with the injustices within the human heart, announcing peace with God as sins are forgiven. Indeed, it is with this realization that we can be set free within that all else follows: we then see the need for the love of God to reach equally to all people, we have a passion for human life and for the world we care for. Let’s all make waves for peace…within, and make the world Green with envy, but without excluding any. At least, let’s test the waters!            

(With thanks to Revd Alex Aldous, chaplain at Prestfelde School)                                                             

The foolishness of this world?

How many April Fools’ Day jokes did you spot last week? ‘Walkers’ offered sliced bread-sized crisps, for example, and a soap manufacturer in Scotland called ‘Arran’ urged customers to order their newly bottled product which would hold its tartan pattern as you squeezed out the soap. The best of all time was probably the 1957 Panorama special about spaghetti trees but the 1980 BBC joke that the Big Ben clock tower was to go digital (sight and sound) went badly when eager first caller customers called in to claim a prize – one of the clock hands – only to be disappointed. Angry complaints went on for weeks!

School foolishness

I do remember the Upper Sixth (Y13) pupils in my boarding house in the 1970s replacing our Housemaster’s new red sports car with a Dinky version. Somehow they rolled the real version off the drive and hid it around the corner. They then hid behind their study windows and watched the incredulity and frustration of our Housemaster as he stepped out of his house! The sixth formers only escaped censure because the Housemaster’s wife had played a part! And then there was the occasion when, as a Deputy Head at a school in Cheltenham, I was ‘arrested’ and handcuffed by the Police as I left Chapel. Part of an April Fool and a charity stunt, I was only released after funds were raised that day for a local charity. (Fortunately I spent the day in comfortable surroundings drinking tea – and, more importantly, the school thought enough of me to want me back and so paid the charity ‘fine’!)

Laugh in Church? You must be joking!

I agree with James Cary, a BBC sitcom writer (‘Miranda’, ‘Hut 33’, ‘Bluestone 42’, etc.) who spoke this year at a TISCA (The Independent Schools Christian Alliance) regional meeting, who argues in his book, ‘The sacred art of joking’, that there’s plenty of humour in the Bible – and should be in church – but all too often we miss it. What, for example, do we make of Jesus’ comic exaggeration in Matthew 7 when He calls on us to remove the ‘logs’ from our eyes’? Moreover, for centuries the church practised ‘Risus Paschalis’, the ‘Easter laugh’, where priests regularly told jokes in Easter sermons. Whilst not seeking to make light of the seriousness of the cross and Jesus’ suffering, there is surely underlying humour in the religious authorities (and the devil) seeking to get rid of Someone who has proved he can raise the dead (Lazarus).

Let’s enjoy some laughter this Easter amongst all the seriousness.