Did you celebrate Easter by going to church? I hope you did.

If you didn’t, what did you do?

Easter is supposedly a celebration of Christ’s Resurrection. Therefore, being in a Christian country, shouldn’t appearing in a Christian church over the last four days (and I am not including the Holy Christian Maundy Thursday as it wasn’t a holiday) for a measly couple of hours out of your precious time be mandatory?

If you are a Muslim (or some other Religious leaning) one can be forgiven. However, Cayman’s new governor was at Elmslie Memorial Church last Sunday morning, and he is a Muslim.

If you are a Muslim it is mandatory to celebrate the Hindu holy day called Holi.

We Christians, however, make things so difficult as we cannot agree on when Easter is.

There are two different Easters annually. The Western Church celebrated Easter on April 1st this year, and one week later, the Eastern Church celebrates Easter on April 8th. Some years both Easters fall on the same date. Most years they do not. Which date is correct? It all depends on the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox in the northern hemisphere. It also and mostly matters on whether your church ascribes to the Julian or the Georgian calendar.

Ridiculous? Of course it is. If Christians cannot be united on the most important day in the Christian calendar no wonder there are so many different divisions and denominations.

Thankfully Christians can agree on some things that do matter. We believe Jesus rose from the dead. Therefore, we believe in eternal life. We believe in forgiveness. We believe that God is love. We believe these because there are those living among us who witness aloud to inexplicable and direct experiences of God. We see that belief in Easter can and does change lives; and that belief opens human souls to feel the Living Love of God like fire.

Does Easter have any relevance to the world? Little as the world at large is not Christian. Easter has relevance only in Christendom.

When I was in Perth, Scotland, a few years ago, a feathery Easter egg stood in the middle of the shopping centre. Beneath was an Easter message that read “This egg is to remind people to shop at independent retailers.” A similar egg with the same message stood in the middle of a shopping centre in London the following year.

There was no mention of the Resurrection of our Lord. The religious message of what Easter is really about is being drowned out by the secular festival of chocolate and shopping being celebrated at supermarkets.

Thankfully that hasn’t happened here. Yet!

Elmslie Church, where I attended this Easter Sunday, was so packed they had to bring in additional seating. I hope it wasn’t just because H.E. Governor Anwar Choudhury was worshipping there. Governor Choudhury appeared to me to be enjoying the service. He arrived early with no pomp and walked around the church greeting the attendees. At the end of the service he stayed by the main doors of the church to shake hands with everyone as they left.

I cannot remember any other governor doing this.

I well remember some of our media trying to whip up our community when it was announced by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s selection of Anwar Choudhury, a Muslim, as Cayman’s next governor.

“Our forefathers built this country on the Christian religion, the Christian beliefs, and why should we have to adapt to any other?” said one local activist who got the attention of Cayman27.

“I don’t think that this society is ready for a Muslim governor. We are a Christian community and to put an individual in our society at such a high rank in our legislature is like spitting on our forefathers graves,” the activist told them. “He should turn down the post. That would be our recommendation. We’ve had enough.”

How this misguided person thinks she/he speaks for all of us Christians and Caymanians is beyond me. The message being presented was decidedly non-Christian.

Thankfully this over-reaction has not been apparent and the reception given to Governor Choudhury, now he is here, has been positive.

What I see now is hope. And isn’t ‘hope’ at the heart of the Easter Message?

As we look around our world, on the surface all we see is murder and mayhem.

If we do not have hope, we are incomplete human beings.

I hope, therefore, you all had an enjoyable and blessed Easter.

I did.