Hop

Spring has sprung and Hollywood has met the challenge with its Easter offering of the misfit tales of Fred O’Hare, an unmotivated misfit, who runs into (literally) E.B. the heir to be the Easter Bunny who has escaped Easter Island to find fame and fortune. You can tell by the characters names and location that the movie is Easter basket full of puns and Easter/bunny innuendos. Hold me back if you will from launching into some lofty diatribe that laments the commercialization and secularization of the sacred. I mean I get that bunnies are cute and who doesn’t like a basket full of candy? But what does this all have to do with a national day that recognizes the resurrection of Jesus the Christ? The history of Easter is well publicized and recently because of its connection with the pagan Saxon goddess Eastre (Ostara), many churches have opted to refer to it as Resurrection Sunday. What seems more satisfying (and biblical) is that every Sunday is a Resurrection celebration.
Now about bunnies as symbols… we have to turn to the German settlers of Pennsylvania who brought with them traditions of Oschter Haws, a hare who laid colored eggs for children to find. The connection to this tradition and the mythology of the goddess Ostara who turned her bird into a hare probably has some historic influence. However, no one can say definitively where we got the oddity of a rabbit laying eggs. Suffice it to say that eggs, rabbits, pagan fertility goddesses and the like find their common ground in the reawakening of the earth at spring time. Such a celebration reminds us that after winter’s chilling barren hold there follows rebirth, new life and resurrection. So I guess there is some “Hop” to this tale but I would like to be assured that beyond sugary treats and a hop down the bunny trail that the message of a new living hope might prevail. Peter (the apostle not the cottontail) writes, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade –kept in heaven for you (1 Peter 1:3, 4).”
I must admit that my favorite bunny though is from the movie “Harvey.” This 1950 movie with Jimmy Stewart is a tale about an eccentric middle aged man named Elwood P. Dawd, who has a 6 foot plus invisible friend named Harvey who happens to be a rabbit. Elwood’s sister decides to have Elwood committed but through a comedy of errors ends up committing herself to an asylum. The story culminates in getting things straightened out and a finale where Elwood is about to be given an injection that will forever banish Harvey from his memory. A taxi cab driver reveals to the sister that others who had received the shot turned surly and she decides she rather have the amiable but misguided brother who sees a six foot rabbit. Likewise, I guess I rather put up with the Easter nonsense of “Hop” if it keeps people looking to new life and the ultimate power of resurrection experienced not in rabbit lore but in the truth of the gospel… the good news of the resurrection of Jesus the Christ from the dead! -DAN