It is helpful to keep such seasonal imagery in mind as we approach Holy Week. This begins with Jesus’ triumphant welcome into Jerusalem. He is greeted with green, luscious palms that are laid down before him as he rides into the city on a donkey. Palms were seen as majestic trees and associated with victory, so by this, Jesus is given a royal and glorious welcome. The time appears ripe for his arrival and a rich harvest seems to beckon. But soon after, the climate turns wintry. Jesus is to be found desperately praying in a darkened and enervated garden in Gethsemane, where he is arrested and put on trial. Good Friday arrives, and by now there seems to be a total absence of life as Jesus is nailed to a desolate tree. Amid thick darkness, Jesus hangs like a lifeless scarecrow in this graveyard of Golgotha. 

     And yet… three days later, from the depths of darkness and death, the story has shifted. The tomb is empty. Jesus is discovered again, not dead but fully alive! He is mistaken for a gardner, in a garden bursting into life. Here, we are given a picture of the new Eden, a new paradise, with the risen Jesus the first fruits of this new creation.

As we at St Andrew’s prepare to enter into this movement of Holy Week again– and we hope you’ll do so by joining us across the various services and events during this time– we approach with signs of life all around us. Despite many parts of the world, as with our own lives, appearing frightening, uncertain, or seemingly fruitless, we face this with the promise of the Easter story. It is a promise of life through death, so that even when signs of life cannot be seen, hope, joy, and life spring eternal!

“Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit.” (John 12.24)

Sam Rylands | Vicar