Happy Easter on April 20th!

Easter has been celebrated continuously on this island since Christianity first arrived. Continuously celebrated for nearly two millennia. There was one brief blip during the pandemic when, for reasons which are now regretted, the churches were closed but, apart from that (and a brief period during the reign of King John) Easter has been part of the regular round of English communal life.

Does anyone remember a theatre troupe called ‘The Reduced Shakespeare Company’? They produced brilliant, quirky and very, very funny pieces of theatre. At some point in the 1990s (my memory is a bit blurry) they toured with a production called, ‘The Reduced Shakespeare Company Does the Bible’. Obviously, I went to see it and, I’m pretty sure it was in the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon (near where I was then serving as a vicar). The fabulous stories of Genesis, Exodus, the Prophets, Jesus’ Miracles and so on were perfectly, hilariously and insightfully executed.

At the end of the first half and during the interval drinks there was one big question doing the rounds: how were they going to tackle Easter without causing massive offence? In the end, they offered something utterly unexpected. As ‘Easter’ was announced, one of the cast walked on dressed in a ridiculously exaggerated Easter Bunny suit and just stood there, in the middle of the stage. When the laughter died down, he simply said, ‘This is what we do with Easter, isn’t it?’

Holding up that mirror to the audience was an inspired bit of theatre - and theology. The Easter Bunny is great, but Christianity is something greater. Easter is at the heart of what Christianity offers: the belief that death doesn’t have the last word, and that the human personality survives it.

Happy Easter 2025!

David Knight
Vicar of Fletching, Piltdown and Sheffield Park