Happy Easter

Happy Easter. It’s a curious phrase. We say Happy Christmas, and that feels easier to understand, the birth of something hopeful. But “Happy Easter”… I’ve always found myself pausing at that. For those who heard me on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, you’ll know why. I don’t find the story particularly happy. Not in the usual sense. Perhaps hopeful is a better word.

Of course, Easter has come to mean other things as well. The turn in the weather, lighter evenings, signs of spring returning. And yes, chocolate. It’s hard to be entirely unhappy with a chocolate egg in hand, unless you can’t eat chocolate, in which case Easter may feel a little unfair. But when I come back to the story itself, I find something more unsettling.
 
On Good Friday, I spoke about Jesus as a scapegoat, someone who challenged the system of his time and, because of that, became the one who carried its weight. The system did not change. Instead, the individual was removed. We still recognise that pattern. When something goes wrong, it is rarely the system that is examined closely. More often, one person steps forward, or is pushed forward, to take the blame, and everything else carries on.
 
Easter, for me, is where that pattern is interrupted. It suggests that what has been pushed aside does not stay there. In the earliest telling of the story, in the Gospel of Mark, the women arrive at the tomb and find it empty, and they run away in fear. Not joy, not celebration, but fear. Something has happened that does not fit the expected ending, and that has always stayed with me.
 
Because in our own lives, there are things we put to one side, things we would rather not look at too closely. Sometimes it feels easier that way. We carry on, we manage, we tell ourselves it is dealt with. And yet, now and again, something returns. It might be a thought that lingers, or an old letter that surfaces, or a moment that catches us off guard. Sometimes it is a person who turns up unexpectedly, and with them comes something we thought had long passed. There is often just a quiet sense that something needs attention. It is not always dramatic. More often it is quite ordinary. But it is enough to make us stop.
 
And if we do stop, if we are willing to face it honestly, things can begin to shift. Not all at once, perhaps clumsily and that’s okay, but enough to notice. Life can feel a little less heavy, as though something has been put back into place.
 
Looking beyond ourselves, it is hard not to notice similar patterns in the wider world. Times of uncertainty, strong personalities, systems under strain. History does not repeat exactly, but it often rhymes. I sometimes find myself thinking of ancient Rome. When Nero died, there was chaos, power struggles, uncertainty about what would come next. And yet, out of that unsettled period, something new eventually emerged. It is not a perfect comparison, but it does make you wonder how often we find ourselves in moments like that, not quite knowing whether we are witnessing decline, change, or the beginnings of something else.
 
And perhaps that is where I find something like resurrection. Not as something distant, but as something that happens within us, and perhaps, in time, within the world around us as well.
 
So when someone says, “Happy Easter,” I understand what is meant, and I will smile. But for me, it carries something quieter. A reminder that not everything stays buried, that truth has a way of returning, and that, if we are willing to meet it, change is always possible. And this, for me, is resurrection. As it says in Gospel of Luke, “Nothing is hidden that will not be disclosed, nor is anything secret that will not become known and come to light.” And as James Martineau reminds us, “The true aim of all religion is not to change the world, but to change ourselves.” Amen.