The Citizen, 2013-04-04, Page 12PAGE 12. THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, APRIL 4, 2013.
By Rev. Tom Murray,
Knox United Church,
Belgrave
Happy Easter season everyone!
How many of you found Easter eggs
on Easter Sunday? Anyone got
purple, green and pink streaks
around your fingernails from
colouring eggs this past weekend?
When you think about it, the
tradition of hard-boiling, dyeing,
hiding and then rediscovering eggs
in grass nests has got to be one of the
strangest rites in human existence.
Oh yes, it is solemnly steeped in
symbolism, spring, rebirth, chicks
cracking out of a tomb-like shell.
But for most of us, truth-telling time;
it really is just a little silly, when you
stop to think about.
As adults we all have different
memories of Easter. In my Scottish
childhood Easter egg hunts mean
bleaching out those Easter egg-
coloured clothes and countertops,
getting up even earlier than the kids,
making lots of egg salad sandwiches
(with strange colours staining the
bread) and finding Easter grasses
lurking in the corners of our homes
on Mother’s Day.
So what is it that still delights us
about finding rainbow-coloured eggs
in all the odd places? For our
children and for all with childlike
yearnings, the Easter egg is
wonderful exactly because it is so
surprising! While their colours are
flashy and their locations secret;
revealing their presence, brings us
incredible and unforeseen joy.
More recently, Easter eggs have
been “post-modernized” becoming a
part of computer-culture. If you
don’t know it yet, your kids can
probably tell you how to discover
“Easter eggs” in computer programs
and games. It seems those techno-
wizards to amuse themselves, and
assert their individuality, insert code
to deliver “Easter eggs!” In Tomb
Raider II, Lara Croft, the female
Indiana Jones-type heroine who
makes Barbie dolls look like G.I.
Joe, may suddenly turn into a
fireball. Why? It's an Easter egg.
Programmers have hidden this
surprise in the computer code for the
game: if Lara takes one full step
forward, one back, turns around
three times and then leaps forward,
she explodes. Another example;
Adobe Photoshop had hidden, at one
time, an electric cat, which in the
MAC version, made a loud belch
when its nose was clicked.
This is what happens when our
culture is focused more on things,
than on relationships connecting
people! We live in a society of
collections these days more so than
we live in a “values” civilization that
energizes connexions! At the heart
of the culture of death these days is
the reduction of human life to things
to be collected. Things bought, sold,
used or not used, broken and
discarded or flung or thrown away.
In Sunday’s Gospel reading from
Luke, the women set out at first
light, on what could only be defined
as a death mission: For having
witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion from
afar, having shadowed Joseph of
Arimathea to the site of Jesus’ tomb
and then spent the hours before the
Sabbath collecting the spices and
concocting the ointments for
anointing the dead, the only thing on
their minds this Easter morning is
death, and on the things death
requires. They are focused on the
tomb. They fixate on the grave
clothes. They savor the scents they
are bringing to mask the stench of
death. These women are deep in the
culture of death. They are concerned
only with “things” of death.
Preoccupied with those objects they
can lay their hands on to accomplish
their mission. They have no
expectation of facing or coming
against a subject in whom to connect
to.
They certainly do not anticipate
encountering a completely new life
and discovering connection to the
divine. Easter morning is the
moment when all changes; when a
culture of death becomes a culture of
life again!
A culture of collections becomes a
culture of connexions! Nothing less
than the entire way the world was
ordered is recreated and birthed
anew. The tomb of death becomes
the womb of life. Jesus cannot be
contained or collected in the cold
stone of earth. He is risen, a living
connection and connexion, who has
gone before us. The expectation of
death is unexpectedly replaced with
the presence of life.
Instead of finding a dead body the
first visitors, to what had been
designated as Jesus’ tomb, find a
living word, and embrace the
promise of a living Lord. All that
Jesus had preached and promised
had come true. Nothing less than
angelic messengers were the first to
kick-start the memory of Jesus’
followers, helping them to recall all
that Jesus had taught.
What Jesus had promised was that
the power of death would be
destroyed. He had promised that
what God intended for humanity,
when created, would be restored,
renewed and reinstated.
The world of destruction and
death that had ruled since the days of
Adam is replaced by a world of life
and love.
The culture of death had been
replaced by the culture of life. A
world of objects that were in the way
was transformed into a world of
subjects who were on a way to hope
and heaven. Jesus’ self-sacrifice was
made a life altering, atoning and
affirming option for everyone who
“remembered” or heard the news of
his defeat of death.
After Easter morning’s dawning,
THE CATHOLIC PARISHES OF NORTH HURON AND NORTH PERTH
CORDIALLY INVITE YOU TO ATTEND HOLY MASS.
OUR SUNDAY LITURGIES ARE AS FOLLOWS:
Brussels:
St. Ambrose
Saturday
6:00 p.m.
17 Flora Street
Wingham:
Sacred Heart
Sunday
9:00 a.m.
220 Carling Terrace
Listowel:
St. Joseph
Sunday
11:00 a.m.
1025 Wallace Avenue N.
Worship Service & Sunday School at 11 a.m.
CORNER OF DINSLEY & MILL STREETS
MINISTER
Rev. Gary Clark, BA, M. Div.
All Welcome
MUSIC DIRECTOR
Floyd Herman, BA, M. Ed.OFFICE: 519-523-4224
APRIL 7 ~ Organ Donation: Real Life Resurrection
APRIL 14 ~ Miracles Happen, Believe It Or Not
getlivingwater.org
Living Water
Christian Fellowship
10:30 a.m. ~ Worship & Sunday School
Wingham Bible Study - Tuesdays 7:30 pm
Youth Group - Tuesdays 7:30 pm (at CRC)
Women At The Well - 1st & 3rd Wednesdays 7:30 pm
at 308 Blyth Rd. (former Church of God)
Pastor: Ernest Dow ~ 519-523-4848
Apr. 7: Rom 12:1ff, Php. 4:10ff
Road to
Recovery #5:
“Making
Changes”
April 20, 7 pm: Free Movie
- “October Baby”
Evangelical Missionary Church
250 Princess St., Brussels
519-887-6388
www.bmfchurch.com
Pastor Jim Whitehead
Guests Welcome
Jesus Is Lord!
Brussels
Mennonite
Fellowship
Worship Service 10:00 am
Sunday School 11:15 am
Youre Invited
to come worship
with us
Sunday, April 7
Brussels Business & Cultural Centre
at 10:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m.
Sunday School for children
4 to 11 years of age at 9:30 a.m.
Childcare provided for infants and
preschoolers during the sermon.
Coffee & cookies after the morning service
For additional details please contact Pastor Andrew Versteeg 519.887.8621
Steve Klumpenhower 519.887.8651 Rick Packer 519.527.0173
You’re Invited To Join Us In Worship
SUNDAYS
Morning Service 10:00 am
Evening Service 7:30 pm
BLYTH CHRISTIAN
REFORMED CHURCH
Hwy. 4, Blyth 519-523-4743
www.blythcrc.ca
ALWAYS A PLACE FOR YOU
HuronChapel.org Sundays @ 10:30
MELVILLE
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
BRUSSELS
Rev. Elwin Garland
SUNDAY, APRIL 7
Wheelchair accessible ~ Nursery care available
519-887-9017
10:00 am - Sunday Morning Worship
- Sunday School
BRUSSELS
Sandra Cable, Pastor
Church Office 519-887-6259
E-mail - beunitedchurch@gmail.com
SUNDAY SERVICE 11:00 am
Sunday School
Celebrating our Christian Faith together in worship
United Church
From the Minister’s StudyEaster is a time for connections: Murray
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