Pastoral Letter
Dear Friends,
April is my favourite month of the year. My wife's and my youngest son's birthday both fall in April, but best of all Easter invariably falls in April too. April is a month that seems to speak to me of new hope, new life, and new joy and happiness. As the great pre-Raphaelite poet Christina Rossetti so eloquently puts it:
Spring bursts today,
For Christ is risen and all the earth's at play.
An old legend tells of a parish priest who found a branch of a thorn tree twisted around so that it resembled a crown of thorns. Thinking it a symbol of the crucifixion of Christ, he took it into his chapel and placed it on the altar on Good Friday. Early on Easter morning he remembered what he had done. Feeling it was not appropriate for Easter Sunday, he hurried into the church to clear it away before the congregation came. But when he came into the church, he found the thorn branches blossoming with beautiful roses.
Crowns have always been the sign of authority and Kingship. Charlemagne, whom historians say should deserve to be called "great" above all others, wore an octagonal crown. Each of the eight sides was a plaque of gold, and each plaque was studded with emeralds, sapphires, and pearls. The cost was the price of a king's ransom. Richard the Lion Heart had a crown so heavy that two earls had to stand, one on either side, to hold his head. The crown that Queen Elizabeth wears is worth over £20 million. Edward II once owned nine crowns, something of a record.
Put them all together, from all of Europe and from the archives of the East, all of them are but trinkets compared to Christ's crown. Revelation 19 says he had many diadems. He wears a crown of righteousness. He wears a crown of glory. He wears a crown of life. He wears a crown of peace and power. Among those crowns, one outshines the rest. It was not formed by the skilled fingers of a silversmith, nor created by the genius of a craftsman. It was put together hurriedly by the rough hands of Roman soldiers. It was not placed upon his head in pomp and ceremony, but in the hollow mockery of ridicule and blasphemy. It is the crown of thorns.
That crown of thorns is an everlasting symbol of the massive sacrifice that he made for you and me. But, as that lovely legend of the flowering crown of thorns reminds us, Easter Day is about the wonderful victory that he achieved over death itself; a victory that affirms the victory of the cross for each one of us. As the lovely hymn "Crown Him With Many Crowns" proclaims:
Crown him the Lord of years,
the Potentate of time,
Creator of the rolling spheres,
ineffably sublime.
all hail, Redeemer, hail!
for thou hast died for me;
thy praise shall never, never fail
throughout eternity.
I wish you all a very happy and joyful Easter.