Every time I see daffodils I’m reminded of Andrew Page, then the assistant pastor at the church we attended in Southampton. And the same goes for flowers on Easter Sunday. I was 16 at the time, the church building was in the process of being rebuilt and we were meeting on the university campus. When this post was originally written in 2010, also a long time ago now, Mr. Page was pastor of his own church, ironically the same one.

Picture the scene. 500 people in the congregation, and a load of over excited children as it’s Easter. We sing the first hymn and sit down for the children’s talk.

Mr. Page starts the children’s talk by asking what the children had had for breakfast. Cornflakes, toast and so on. He picks a daffodil from the flower arrangement on the platform and breaks off a piece of the stem and eats it.

He continues to talk about breakfast, all the time breaking off pieces of the stem and eating it.

Then he moved on to Easter Eggs. How many and what kinds. How many had they eaten. Was chocolate better than cornflakes for breakfast.

He pulls off the petals one by one and eats them.

Silence fills the church, and I mean you could hear a pin drop. He continues to talk and eat until he’s eaten the whole flower!

A pause. Then he looks out over the congregation and asks “What have I just done?”

No one answers, until one brave child at the front (no not me) raises a hand and says “You ate a daffodil.”

He nods. “Yes. Now I bet all the grown ups are thinking it’s a fake flower, rice paper or marzipan. It wasn’t. It was a real flower and yes I know they’re poisonous.” He pauses for a moment then adds. “There are 500 of you here that saw me do it. You’ll go away and tell your friends, Andrew Page ate a daffodil and they’ll tell you you’re mad, because it’s not possible.” There was another pause. “500 people saw Jesus after he rose from the dead. No one believed them either.”

At the end of the service, he looked rather green as he shook hands on the door, insisting on doing so at arms length as he felt extremely sick.

And for weeks after he’d find tulips or other flowers in the pulpit with a note saying ‘in case you get hungry during the sermon.’

originally posted on my other blog in March 2010.

PS Don’t try this at home.