Easter's Early Arrival and Its Deep Historical Roots
Easter, traditionally marking the end of winter and Lent, symbolises renewed life, spring, and hope for Christians worldwide. This celebration, when believers emerge emotionally from the Tomb and priests change their vestments, is actually set by the Jewish calendar. Celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full Moon following the spring equinox, Easter arrives exceptionally early this year.
The Chilled Beauty of an Early Spring
This early Easter brings a thin and chill beauty, even as snowdrops fade and hope personifies in nature. Shafts of sunlight and enchanting rainbows appear alongside daffodils bobbing and whin and forsythia in bloom. Yet, frost, curtaining hail, and wintry showers may still linger. While many anticipate roasted Paschal lamb and a glass of blushful Provençal wine, a garden feast in Scotland remains unlikely.
Chocolate eggs, from high-end Thorntons Continental to simpler Yorkie bars, adorn celebrations. The association of eggs with Easter is ancient, predating the festival itself. A scorched egg, or Beitzah, remains part of the Passover meal for Jewish friends, also celebrated this weekend. Dressed for travel, they sup on roast lamb, bitter herbs, and vegetables dipped in salted water, recalling past enslavement and tears. The youngest child asks, ‘Why do we do these things?’ The burnt egg symbolises the lost Temple, with the toast, ‘Next year, Jerusalem,’ echoing unspoken thoughts of survival and resilience.
The Egg: Symbol of Life, Rebirth, and Struggle
The egg represents the cycle of life, rebirth, and mourning. The age-old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, finds a ready reply from Hebridean crofters: the clocking hen. A broody hen, determined to hatch, sits in the nesting-box, eyes glazed and making clock-clock noises. She can be confined until she recovers or given thirteen fertile eggs to incubate for twenty-one days, with water and corn at hand.
Hatching is a tough struggle for the chick, lasting a day as it breaks from the shell. Intervention leads to death, highlighting an immediate, personal, and existential fight. This mirrors the Easter message, as the Apostle Peter exhorted, ‘Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead.’ Jesus, in Gethsemane, prayed for the cup to pass but drank it fully, dying naked and alone in agony.
The Profound Realities of the Crucifixion
Gethsemane reveals the tension between Christ's divine and human natures. Despite efforts to complicate salvation, the penitent thief received Christ's promise, ‘Today shalt thou be with Me in paradise,’ without baptism or Communion. Women remained steadfast at the Cross, securing, washing, and anointing the body, and first witnessing the Resurrection. In contrast, the men fled, with Peter denying Christ thrice before the cock crowed.
Cultural distortions often soften the Crucifixion's horror. Romans crucified with nine-inch nails through wrists and heels, causing slow death by suffocation. Soldiers sometimes smashed legs to hasten death, as with the thieves on Golgotha. Priests avoided unclean corpses on the Sabbath, and a spear confirmed Christ's death with oozing blood and fluid. As George MacLeod noted, Jesus was crucified ‘on a town garbage heap, at a crossroad of politics,’ with titles in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek.
Easter: Resurrection, Renewal, and Rejection
Easter is not about the corpse or tomb but the Resurrection—the death of death in Christ. It signifies renewal, with prophecies fulfilled in Judaea during Christ's ministry from 28 to 31 AD. Luke's detailed account places it in historical context, with more evidence than Julius Caesar's British incursions. Easter changed the Sabbath to the first day of the week, commemorating the Resurrection.
Rejoicing need not involve processions or choruses but can include family gatherings, Easter egg hunts, and sun on skin. Yet, the Resurrection remains central to Christian faith, as Paul emphasised. This message faces rejection, with historical persecution in Scotland and ongoing global challenges, such as Canada's recent law potentially criminalising Bible quotes. Every Easter, people hear the Gospel and confront Christ's truth, often rejecting it.
Return to the Croft: A Metaphor for New Life
Back on the croft, after twenty-two days, the clocking hen, now car-cushion-sized, hears cheeping from her hatchlings. Care involves renewing water and grain, checking for duds, and providing chick-feed. Tiny fluffy heads emerge, symbolising new life. Jesus lamented, ‘How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not…’ As George MacLeod concluded, Golgotha was where cynics talked, thieves cursed, and soldiers gambled—where Christ died and what He died about.
Easter's message of hope and renewal remains vital, offering the precious gift of hope in challenging times.
