‘That’s the power of ritual,’ said the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, on Thought for the Day last week. He was thinking particularly of the Jewish festival of Passover with its ritual gathering of the family to eat unleavened bread and bitter herbs as a re-enactment of the experience of exile and slavery. ‘It’s an expression of collective memory and shared ideals…an annual reminder of what it felt like to be oppressed.’
His words were striking precisely because ritual is so often regarded with suspicion these days, signifying rigid, backward, inclusive thinking. Yet these simple acts of representation done in unison (whether Jewish, Christian, Muslim) allow us to become acquainted with loss, bereavement, betrayal. It’s also useful to be reminded not just occasionally but also regularly and repeatedly of the sacrifices made in the past. By them, we are shaped. We are also not immune.
The Easter story, of suffering, sacrifice and rebirth, is the most powerful of Christian narratives, much more so than Christmas.
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