18. fall and spring: holy cross and pascha

i am of the first generation to grow up under the curse of television, the last generation in the united states, canada or western europe to grow up experiencing reality rather than virtual reality, or as its critics tend to say, hyper reality. an advantage of having lived in this transitional period is a stock of stories and characters from television that my whole generation remembers. one of my favourites is from howdy doody: an indian princess named summerspringwinterfall. her name was a two-edged sword: it looked back to the time when american children knew the seasons from direct experience; but it also suggested the silliness, the primitivity, of people who took the procession of the seasons seriously, whose wheat came from the earth rather than being shot from guns, as it was in another popular image from my tv-insired. random access memories.

the ancient israelites of course were one of the primitive groups for whom the seasons were intensely important. a people who had settled into an uneasy agrarianism with an ancestry of herding nomadism ("my father was a wandering aramaen. he went down into egypt to find refuge there . . . " says the confession at deuteronomy 26:5), their transition had not been without conflict, a conflict first recorded in the legend of cain and abel (genesis 4:1-16). their lives depended upon timely "sowing and reaping, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night . . ." (genesis 8:22).

their earliest festivals had been agriculural. it is sometimes said that they came to be understood as having religious meaning as well, but for people who live close to the natural world, such a distinction seldom occurs. what did happen is that the meaning, the contents, of the feasts developed as the law was revealed, as they came into the land, and as worship came to be centered in the temple. the "festivals solemn to YHWH" are described in the twenty-third chapter of leviticus.

in the fall, in the seventh month, came rosh ha-shonah, the new year and annual remembrance of the creation of adam, man, yom kippur, the day of atonement, and the feast so important it was sometimes simply called the hag, the festival, the seven days of sukkot, the feast of tabernacles.

in the spring, in the first month, came pesach, passover and unleavened bread (and fifty days later, in the third month, shavuot, pentecost).

the church immediately picked up pascha and pentecost, called in england easter and whitsunday. their importance in the life of the church as the days of resurrection and the gift of the holy spirit are attested in the four gospels and in the acts of the apostles. but even though jesus as the fulfillment of the day of atonement is the major theme of the epistle to the hebrews, it would be three hundred years before the church developed a ritual occuring on the fall equinox to replace the jewish celebrations she did not continue to observe.

it was necessary that such a festival be developed. the fall equinox is too big an event in people's experience not to be explained as finding fulfillment in christ jesus. as a. g. hebert so perceptively comments, "above all, christ is the fulfiller." the difficulty of course is that easter had swallowed up the need for rosh ha-shonah, since the resurrection marked the first day of the new creation, the emergence from the earthen tomb of the new adam, and for yom kippur, jesus christ having accomplished once and for all the atonement towards which the yearly rites of the jews could only point (hebrews 10:12-14).

three hundred years after the crucifixion and resurrection of christ jesus, helena, mother of constantine, would visit the site to build a shrine. To do so required quite a lot of excavation, because previous emperors had erected a temple to jupiter there in an effort to make the place unavailable for christian devotion. during the work she found a piece of wood she decided must be from the very cross of our lord, and which would become the major relic of the shrine.

constantine's shrine was quite elaborate, as was suitable for such a venerable location. it consisted of two principal buildings: a basilica for the liturgy of the word, and a circular church called the resurrection--in greek anastasis--whose altar was placed on the very site of the tomb. it was used for the liturgy of the table and the singing of the daily office. the two buildings were separated by a courtyard through which the faithful passed on their way from word to table, and from which the exposed top of cavalry's hill was visible. there on good friday took place the solemn veneration of the cross, and there the congregation gathered after vespers for a final prayer and dismissal.

the shrine was dedicated in a. d. 335 on the 14th of september, the seventh month of the roman calendar, a date chosen to echo the dedication of solomon's temple on the same day of the seventh month of the jewish calendar (2 chronicles 7:8-10).

thus the time of year when, in the northern hemisphere, the darkness of the night begins to exceed the light of the day and the vegetable world begins to die, that time became the moment of exalting the cross, the ultimate symbol of the power of darkness, which would become the penultimate symbol of the power of light and life (the ultimate expression being the resurrection itself). it would look forward in the growing darkness to the unquenchable life of the one who is himself light.

but the feast also gathers up another fulfillment, another revelation, of christ jesus: his body's replacing the jerusalem temple, being destroyed and being raised up in three days (john 2:10-22). in an example of probably unintentional irony, on yom kippur, the day of atonement which coincides more or less with holy cross day (the jewish calendar is lunar and wanders a bit in relation to the solar calendar), modern jews read the book of jonah, the story about which jesus said, when "some of the scribes and pharisees . . . said 'we would like to see a sign from you,' . . . replied, 'it is an evil and unfaithful generation that asks for a sign! the only sign it will be given is the sign of the prophet jonah. for as jonah was in the sea-monster for three days and three nights, so will the son of man be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.'" (matthew 12:38-40).

just as fall, with so much of the world seeming to die, would not be a time for festival if there were no hope of the spring to follow, so holy cross day gets its hope, and its power, from the pasca, easter, which follows six months later. about the resurrection anything i write will fall short. one can only rejoice at crocus leaves and blossoms rising from the snow of winter. one can only most greatly rejoice at jesus rising from the heart of the earth. it is a truly cosmic event, a fact the church recognizes by celebrating on the first sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. all our measures of time are included, for what we are celebrating, as we mentioned in the chapters about sunday, especially chapter 13, is nothing less than the recreation of the cosmos: ". . . for anyone who is in christ, there is a new creation; the old creation is gone, and now the new one is here" (2 corinthians 5:17).

the fact and the meaning and our proper response to the resurrection few of us can grasp in a moment. matthew records that after the resurrection, when the eleven disciples met jesus at the arranged place, "some hesitated" (matthew 28:17).

one enters into life in christ through baptism: ". . . when we were baptized in christ jesus we were baptized in his death; in other words, when we were baptized we went into the tomb with him and joined him in death, so that as christ was raised from the dead by the father's glory, we too might live a new life" (romans 6:3-4).

the immensity of this event led the church to require up to three years of catechesis before baptism, not at all unreasonably when considers christ jesus spent three years with his disciples before his crucifixion. all the faithful have come to approach this awesome day of death and resurrection through a forty-day lent. but none of our words about the resurrection seem to express its meaning any better or more powerfully than spring itself, that great outburst of life fulfilled in the great outburst of the living jesus from the rocky tomb. but we try, as in this hymn by j. m. c. crum:

Now the green blade riseth from the buried grain,
Wheat that in the dark earth many days has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

In the grave they laid him, love whom men had slain,
Thinking that never he would wake again.
Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green,

Forth he came at Easter, like the risen grain,
He that for three days in the grave had lain.
Quick from the dead my risen Lord is seen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain,
Thy touch can call us back to life again;
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.