There was a time when Easter Day was held to be what was called a ‘day of obligation’. That meant that this was a day when every Christian was expected to come to church and receive holy communion. Come to think of it, it still is.
When they came to church on Easter Day the congregation would have heard the Collect, the special prayer for the day, put it to God that “as by thy special grace preventing1 us thou dost put into our minds good desires, so by thy continual help we may bring the same to good effect...”
In the course of time this prayer was criticised because its authors seemed too anxious to use the great truth of Easter Day that God had raised Jesus Christ from the dead to instill a sense of social order into the people. But then, this was, after all, the only day when they could guarantee that everyone, yes, everyone, would be in church and so be sure to get their message across.
But perhaps the men who compiled the Book of Common Prayer had a point. Today in our society many people seem to have lost all sense of social obligation or responsibility. First it was ‘Anything goes - everything is all right - as long as it doesn't hurt anyone’. But now it’s become ‘Anything goes as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone we know, or who can’t afford the loss’. Or even just ‘Anything goes.’
Many people today only seem to obey laws if they think they are being monitored - the speeding laws are a case in point. We do nothing costly out of a sense of duty or of social obligation. We erect strong boundaries around our generosity. We seem to have learned nothing from the selfless self-sacrifice of Jesus upon the Cross.
Perhaps the authors of the Book of Common Prayer indeed had a point. We do need to work harder at being community. We do need to recover our long forgotten sense of being one family of the children of God, living together in our common gratitude at being saved and redeemed through the passion and vindication of God’s Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ.
My Prayer for this Easter season is that perhaps this is the time when we can recover these insights and begin to make good our common loss.
With my best wishes,
John-David Yule