We had nice weather last Friday. It was somewhat glorious, to be able to collect the children from school without needing to wear a coat. Spring is at hand, despite the best efforts of the weather system known as The Beast from the East, who has been trying to prolong winter. Winter, I think, is always trying to hold back spring. It won’t work though. You can’t stop the changing seasons.
Easter is also at hand. If you listen, you can already hear the Palm Sunday crowd, its praises echoing forward through time. The Pharisees tried to stop it, their own little Beast from the East tantrum, but that didn’t work either. It’s no wonder that we can hear it all, two thousand years later. Jesus himself said that if the crowd didn’t get it out of their system then the stones themselves would have to take up the song; it’s just that powerful.
Later that week, there was more music, though it was more muted. After their last meal together, Jesus and his friends sing a song before heading towards the garden. A glimpse of spring on the darkest night of the year. Winter tries its luck again: “The one I kiss, he’s the one that you want.”
And it seems to work. The friends scatter. Jesus is tried by a kangaroo court and nailed up to die.
But you can’t hold back the changing seasons, and you can’t hold back the magic of Easter song. Even in the darkness of Gethsemene night; the darkness of that Friday eclipse; the darkness of the tomb, we know what’s coming.
The ice is thawing, the green shoots are peaking through. For us, spring will turn into summer and summer into autumn and autumn back into winter, but as far as Easter is concerned, winter is behind us and always will be.
