Friends
As you read this, Easter is just around the corner – or may even have arrived. For some, it may have passed by almost un-noticed and for others, it will have been an opportunity to celebrate with family and friends, perhaps to have an Easter egg hunt with children or just a welcome extra couple of days off. But for Christians, this is the culmination of 46 days of preparation since we used up our eggs and flour on Shrove Tuesday, reminded ourselves that we are but dust and to dust we shall return on Ash Wednesday and passed through 40 days of fasting and 6 days of Sunday; for Sunday, the day of resurrection, can never be a day of fasting.
Last Sunday we passed into Jerusalem behind the Jesus who for one moment, riding on that donkey to the adulation of the crowds, looked as if he might after all be a warrior king. We followed him to the temple where he overturned the tables of the money lenders and ultimately to the upper room, where he washed his disciples’ feet and sent Judas on his way, telling him to go and do what he had to do. After we had sung a song, we passed out with him to the Mount of Olives, into the Garden of Gethsemane and wondered at the sleeping disciples who could not keep watch even for one brief hour, hoping we ourselves would or could have done better if it had been our calling. The following morning we followed him through sham trials and interviews, torture and degradation, beatings, and a sham coronation with a crown of thorns, the ruby red of his blood more precious than any stone. We walked with him along the Via Dolorosa as Simon was told to carry the cross for him – a carpenter so broken he couldn’t carry a piece of wood; a man who had walked the Holy Land for three years, so exhausted he could scarcely walk the half-mile from the city to Golgotha. We stood with his friends at the foot of the cross and we heard him cry “It is finished”. And from Friday until Sunday in different moods and levels of reflection according to our nature and the world around us, we tried to imagine what it was like that first Good Friday when the Son of God died.
But now comes the morning. Death has lost, life has won. Morning, Easter morning, has come.
God bless, Vicci