The Winter of Our Apocalypse

We all like good times better than bad times. But God is with us all the time, and there’s much we can learn when things aren’t going well.

The gospel reading for today tells of Jesus being in the temple and includes a small detail you may not have noticed: John, the gospel writer, tells us, “It was winter.”

It is unusual for any of the gospels to identify a season. The likely reason John did it here was to explain why Jesus was walking under a shelter — the portico of Solomon in the temple — rather than in the open. The weather was inclement. Being in this confined space made it possible for Jesus’ opponents — the Jewish leaders consisting of chief priests and Pharisees (see John 7:45 and 11:47) — to surround him and demand answers. As the J.B. Phillips rendering of the New Testament puts it, those leaders “closed in on him.” This was not a friendly crowd, and they demanded to know if Jesus claimed to be the Messiah.

We are now into spring, but let’s run with John’s mention of winter. In terms of Jesus’ public ministry, he was entering into what we ...