Before I came to these parishes I was curate in Brigg, which for me was a steep learning curve as the Brigg parishes were of a different church tradition than the church I was brought up in. So I got a shock when we were starting to plan the services for my first Easter there, and the vicar said to me that I should do the Exultet – I had no clue what the Exultet was!
The Exultet, also known as the Easter Proclamation, is an ancient hymn traditionally sung before dawn on Easter Sunday, and as I found out to my horror, it is sung unaccompanied and in Gregorian chant! It is a hymn which encourages all of creation to rejoice and praise God for the salvation that Jesus brings by his death and resurrection. And it is usually sung next to the large Easter candle, which symbolises the recurring metaphor of the darkness of sin and death being defeated by the light and life of Jesus. Surprisingly, within this hymn praising God's work, there is a bit of a digression to praise the work of bees!
In recent years the importance of bees has been increasingly recognised as the bee population decreases. Bees can be vital for the growth of a lot of the food that we eat, and so we are being encouraged to grow more flowers, particularly wildflowers. And around the seventh century, when the Exultet was probably written, bees produced honey which was one of the few sources of sweetness, as well as providing wax for light-giving candles. It is in connection with candles that bees are mentioned in the Exultet – the Easter candle is “the work of bees and of your servants’ hands” and “is fed by melting wax, drawn out by mother bees to build a torch so precious.” The candle reminds us of the work of Jesus and so we are to be thankful for bees for their part in providing this.
Bees aren't, however, just useful for what they produce, historically bees have also been held up as examples of how to behave. As Pope Pius XII said in an address to beekeepers in 1948, bees are examples both of hard work and co-operation, where different bees do different jobs and all for the good of the hive rather than for self-centred reasons. There are also lessons that we can learn about true worship from bees being devoted to a single queen, being ready to sacrifice themselves for the queen and giving their best produce (royal jelly) for the queen.
Most importantly, the re-appearance of bees and many other plants and creatures in the spring point us to the resurrection of Jesus. Easter speaks of the re-creation of the world made possible through Jesus' death and resurrection, and that only through that re-creation can the harmonious society, traditionally exemplified by bees, become a reality. And our call as 'bees' in that re-created society is to work and to feast on honey!
