[MUSIC]
Welcome to the University of Nottingham and the Department of Theology and Religious Studies.
This is another film in the ‘Sacred Calendar series’
and today I’m joined by Professor Tom O’Loughlin of the University of Nottingham
Professor of Historical Theology, who is going to talk about Easter.
So Tom what’s important about Easter?
The standard way you have to begin to talk about Easter is to say
that Easter is the most important festival for the Christian year.
And then usually you add that it is far more important than Christmas
even though Christmas is the one that there’s more hullabaloo in the marketplace about Christmas
than there is about Easter.
Think about Christmas - parties, Christmas cake,
Christmas tree, lights in the streets, all the things.
Easter - chocolate eggs, few days off, couple of bank holidays.
But, to say that it’s the central festival, in the Christian calendar
fails to realise that it is also the central event in the way Christians remember.
Christians don’t just remember this person called ‘Jesus’
they remember Jesus as the one who died and rose.
To acknowledge Jesus is to acknowledge the Easter Jesus
the Jesus who has conquered death, it is the Jesus of Easter Sunday.
And the whole of Christian faith is formulated on remembering Jesus who rose
and when we read the Gospels, even though we read things that happened before Easter
we read them in the light of Easter faith because they were meant to preach Jesus as risen.
So you’re reading the Gospel of Matthew, you pick up the fifth chapter and you hear of Jesus going out
and going up the mountain and sitting down and he opens his mouth and gives the
what’s it called, the sermon on the mountain.
Well that is not a philosopher sitting down saying here is some ethical teaching for you.
The way that Matthew intends you to understand that is that you believe that Jesus has risen
and this is part of the preparation that helps you to understand what it is to believe in the risen Jesus.
So Easter is not just an event, but it is the focusing event for understanding Christian faith.
And as the focusing event the celebration of Easter each year, is as it were
refocusing and re-centering on this as the central belief event.
Easter, of course, originates because Christianity emerges as a strand within Judaism.
And the whole history of the Jewish people is of course that Pesach
Passover is a central event, and so Jesus and his fellow group of Jews
they were celebrating this and they were celebrating it in a particular way.
They were celebrating it in Jerusalem
and that tells us a lot about the way Jesus is thinking about Judaism
the way he is thinking about himself and his movement.
He is celebrating Passover, not just anywhere but he makes a definite decision
he will travel down to Jerusalem.
He will celebrate this in the city of the great King
he will celebrate it in this central place, where God is present to his people.
So there is a group, this first group of followers
and they are celebrating Passover, Pesach, but Greek-speaking Jews at the time were already calling Pascha,
just changing the sound slightly.
And it is then that he is arrested, the trial takes place
he is executed on the cross on Good Friday and then the veil of history draws over and there is this gap.
And then on Sunday, the community believe that he conquers death, so Easter becomes central
and becomes a great festival already inheriting the meaning of a festival within Judaism.
So what memories did it inherit?
It inherited primarily the notion that Passover is the liberation of a people
so that Christians then take over and say “ah well” Easter is the liberation of the people by Jesus.
So Jesus becomes liberator, deliverer, healer, the keyword that is used in the tradition is Saviour.
So to celebrate Jesus as risen is to celebrate Jesus as Saviour.
Then it takes over another meaning. To become a Christian, is to enter into the life of the risen Christ.
There is this encounter with the risen one.
St Paul says well where do we encounter this, well, we encounter it in dying and rising with him in baptism.
So Easter then takes on a meaning of being the time of baptism.
So Easter remembers what happened in Jesus but it also becomes celebratory of baptism
and this continues still today, it is just that the strand has continued on.
So, Easter is the ideal time for new Christians to be baptised.
But if new Christians are to be baptised then they have to have a preparation.
So Easter becomes the conclusion of preparation.
So you have to have a period of preparation and you have the idea of lent.
So Easter then becomes the completion of Lent.
And then if you are going to celebrate the risen Christ and see Easter as the encounter with the risen Christ
you become aware of your own imperfections.
Oh well, if there is going to be an encounter with Christ there needs to be a period of penance.
So preparation for baptism becomes a period of penance.
So Lent is as it were the spring cleaning for celebrating the risen Christ.
So when we say Christians celebrate Easter and Christians celebrate Easter as the central event
and the central celebration - it’s multi-layered.
There is umpteen levels of reflection and tradition involved, it is a historical encounter obviously
in that it is recalling that this key event at the end of the life of Jesus takes place
but it’s then the celebration of the encounter here and now
it is the celebration of baptism and that that’s encounter, it’s the period that concludes preparation.
It is also the celebration of Jesus as Saviour.
Now in the West we tend to think of resurrection as life after death.
But actually the understanding is slightly different, but it is a crucial difference
it’s the celebration of Jesus who is the victor over death.
If you want to understand Easter there is a very famous Latin hymn that runs something like this
‘Life and death fought a duel, and this duel ended in an unusual way
the duel ended in life conquering death’.
We expect that whenever life encounters death, that death somehow has the last laugh.
So the confession of Jesus as risen is not the confession that death is not the final word
but that, because of Christ, life conquered death.
Therefore, Easter becomes the centre of the notion of Christian joy.
So, what are Christians celebrating?
They are remembering the past. They are remembering the first times, the times of Jesus
they are looking forward to their own final resurrection, a future event
the encounter of their conquest of death, their entry into new life (at the end).
And right now between the Alpha and the Omega, they are engaged in the encounter with the risen Christ.
Being a baptised people, Easter is encountering Jesus who is risen, the one who has conquered death
Thank you Tom
for providing us with a very multi-layered account of the meanings of Easter in your answer to my question
and Happy Easter to you.
Thank you! And Happy Easter to you.
And Happy Easter from us
at the University of Nottingham at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies.