As much as I love autumn and winter, and tolerate summer, spring is likely my favorite season.
It comes after the end of the misery of February, which I famously loathe. Temperatures warm up, but without the stifling horror of humidity. New growth gradually, carefully, cautiously peeks its way out of sleeping buds and ground that slowly warms with the caress of a welcome, loving sun. I shift from being focused on hunting animals to saving orphaned animals. Baseball returns (real baseball, the kind played by dreaming kids in community parks and local stadiums, where the dream still lives without the corruption of commerce). My baby goats have gained their legs, and anything venturing too close to the fortress-like nests in our yard will send gray-green fluff balls scurrying under the outstretched wings of hissing, snapping mother geese.
A couple thousand years ago, spring was when my ancestors prepared their nets, counted their flocks, or sharpened their plows, waiting to see if the spring would bring storms, drought, bandits, warlords or more of those strange Roman soldiers.
More than 2,500 miles away from those smoky villages, it was also spring, but those folks were long since used to the Romans.
Some in the Roman Empire celebrated pagan spring holidays. Others celebrated Passover, the season when the Angel of Death left untouched the homes of those Hebrews where blood marked the doors, the last step before beginning their departure from Egypt. It had become little more than an historical holiday for some, since there was little reason to believe the Children of Israel would ever see the promised Messiah. Many still held on, having faith that God would someday send a savior. God did, of course, but while He was the savior they needed, he wasn’t the savior they expected.
Spring is a time of hope, even when we don’t realize it.
Easter and Resurrection Day have long since become intertwined, since man has always leaned toward whatever is convenient. The Pooka to which my Celtic ancestors made sacrifices was said to sneak around at night, fertilizing the ground, flocks and herds. The hopes for food and safety were granted by a beast that would send modern kids screaming in fear — then it became the Easter Bunny. Now Ol’ Pete Cottontail hops along, hiding eggs to be found by scrambling kids wearing their finest new dress clothes.
Some churches handle the whole crossover problem (no pun intended) very well, keeping the fun activities for the kids while emphasizing that it ain’t Easter — it’s Resurrection Day. Still others gloss over the pagan roots. Some just emphasize Resurrection Day. Commercial society often borders on blasphemy by blending the two, like Santa Claus kneeling before a manger at Christmas.
I honestly think some folks don’t realize that an oversized bunny didn’t hang on a cross for the sins of the world.
The Son of God did.
I cannot imagine the heartbreak of those who were the first to love and trust Christ, when they saw him humiliated, beaten, whipped and nailed to a wooden cross at Golgotha, a place of death and filth.
We have the benefit of the gospels, with concordances and footnotes and cross-references to show us how the words of the prophets were fulfilled on that terrible day, in a horrible place. We can put it in perspective.
They didn’t have that benefit. They had nothing but fear and disappointment.
Even though it was the season of Passover, the beginning of spring, they had no understanding.
They had no hope.
During the worst times of my life, I have sought solace in church, and I don’t mean a building, but the people who understand the Jesus meant the church is comprised of the body of Christ, the people, the church family. I didn’t always seek them when I should have. It was often the church family who was there for me, whether it was when my parents died, or when times were tough, or when I was in a dark place. I prayed, of course, and that doesn’t require anyone but the person praying and God, but there is comfort in being surrounded by those who love you and hurt for you.
But the disciples and the earliest Jesus followers — even his own mama — couldn’t seek that solace.
Seeking the fellowship of the synagogue, wanting the guidance of the faith most of them had loyally followed, reaching out for the comfort of the body of believers, all those things we take for granted could have meant death or imprisonment, because they followed Jesus.
I can’t imagine their fear as they probably hid behind locked doors, or even denied knowing and following one who taught nothing but love for others, a man who was like them, but different. They were prevented from understanding when he told them he would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days. They didn’t know that the temple was much more than stone and gold and silver and camphor wood, so much more than scrolls and laws and songs and ceremony.
They had no hope on that Sabbath after the crucifixion, but when the women came running back from the tomb on Sunday morning, the first glimmer of hope had to return, just as the first sprigs and stalks poke their way through the earth when it warmed by the spring sunshine.
That hope would blossom and flourish over the next few weeks, as the Son of God walked among them again, even just for a little while.
We live in perilous times; things the average person knows are right and wrong are being twisted. Money doesn’t buy what it did just a couple years ago. Those who profit from fear continue to scream about a return of the pandemic, while others insist we get involved in a war that I am confident will become a new and more horrible version of the last world war. Criminals and monsters are allowed to roam free.
The worst of the doomsayers even question whether it is too late, whether there is any room for hope.
I beg to differ.
I know there is hope. There is hope now just as there was hope when those women saw the open tomb. There is the eternal hope that will last long after this country I love becomes nothing more than a map in a history book, if such still exist. There is hope that is even more sure than the daffodils that cautiously break through ground that was frozen just weeks before.
My hope is eternal.
My hope is in the Son of God who was born to a virgin, lived a sinless life in the face of every temptation man has ever faced or ever will face, and came out without sin. My hope is not on a cross in a place of death and filth, but in an empty tomb and the promise that my sins, which are legion, have been forgiven.
My hope is in Jesus Christ, and that is why I celebrate Resurrection Day.
It’s my fervent prayer that you, too, have the hope that never fails, no matter the season.
