24th March, 2005

EASTER: It's easy to overlook the true meaning of the celebration amid the chocolate eggs, bunnies and buns. PICTURE: Leonardo Falaschini (www.sxc.com)

SALLY HOLT

Did anyone notice what quietly slipped onto supermarket shelves just after Boxing Day? Surrounded by the debris of Christmas bargains and discount decorations were packets of plump, doughy, hot cross buns. With Easter only three months away, it was apparently time for the next instalment of retail religion.

It’s easy to become nostalgic with age, but a few decades ago Easter felt more like Easter. Not something that was tacked onto the Boxing Day sales.

Back then, it seemed hot cross buns would appear in baker shop windows only a week or two before Good Friday. Their arrival signalled that Easter was on its way, and the sticky white cross - piped over warm fruit buns - reminded us of the one on which Jesus died.

Today, if you look carefully, ‘hot cross buns’ are masqueraded and marketed all year round. There are ‘cross-less fruit buns’, ‘fruit-less crossed buns’ and hot cross buns that have neither fruit nor a cross!

So by the time Easter rolls around, hot cross buns are, well - a tad boring. For many, they’re simply an entrée to a main course of chocolate. Like Christmas, the true meaning of Easter can be shrouded in substitutes and cross on the bun nothing more than a decorative dollop.

Last year, Mel Gibson’s remarkable film, The Passion of the Christ graphically grabbed the world’s attention. It was Easter uncut. No fluffy bunnies, no chocolate eggs and no hot cross buns. Just a cross - and a sombre, brutal portrayal of Jesus’ death.

It wasn’t easy viewing, and in many scenes, the preferable option was to look away. But in a society where Easter comes chocolate-coated, Gibson’s blockbuster was almost essential. It was a significant attempt to redress the balance. It forced us to look at the cross.

Current commercial culture often encourages us to ‘look away’. Walk into a supermarket and you’ll know it’s Easter. But nothing in the food-filled aisles will tell you why. It’s easy to be distracted from Jesus.

Interestingly, there were probably distractions on that very first Good Friday - not from a profit-driven culture selling Easter eggs, but from a complacent one: just another flogging, just another crucifixion, just another man.

Most likely, that’s what the Roman centurion was thinking when he started his Friday shift on Golgotha’s rocky outcrop. Accustomed to supervising the deaths of petty criminals and rebels, for him, it was probably just another day at the office. The quicker it was over, the quicker he could get home. He had other things on his mind.

But as the day grew inexplicably sinister, he must have looked more closely at that centre cross, and the bobbing head of the man who hung from it. Who was he, this so-called ‘King of the Jews?’ And why was the sky so black, the air so chill?

When Jesus cried out “it is finished” and the ground under the centurion’s feet began to erupt, his eyes would have been firmly fixed on Jesus. In that terrifying moment, he knew without doubt whose eyes he was looking into. “Surely this man was the Son of God”, he exclaimed (Matthew 27:54). His attention was captivated by the cross.

This Easter, while we enjoy its food and festivities, let’s not detract, distract or dilute its message. And before you bite into that fruit-filled bun, pause for just moment, and take a look at the cross.