Easter: What Jesus Did

It's Easter and the search for something new to say...or some new way to tell the story...is at hand. Previously, we have considered the women, the disciples, Mary Magdalene, and how Easter fits into the calendar. The story of that morning is so familiar (John 20:1-18). We know the characters, how they act, what they say, what they find at the tomb. We see Jesus brightly shining, often carrying a victory banner, climbing out of a box tomb or walking out of a cave-tomb. He speaks Mary's name and exchanges a few words with her. And then he is gone (in John's gospel, disappearing from sight until he appears again in a locked room with the disciples).

We can talk about what Jesus did: conquering sin and death, redeeming humanity, doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. Mexican muralist Jesse Clemente Orozco gives a different image of what Christ did through his death and resurrection (though not necessarily on Easter morning) in the work shown here.

José Clemente Orozco. Christo Destruye su Cruz. 1943. INBA/MACG

What Jesus does here isn't just come down from the cross or overcome the cross. He destroys his cross. He takes an axe and hacks at the base of the cross (though often the cross is described as marble like the architectural forms behind Jesus. Though our point of view is from an oblique angle, we can see that the cross is completely separated from its base. The cross is set to fall. What does that mean in light of the Easter story?

This is one of three versions of Christ destroying his cross. Another version is at Dartmouth College. Painted a little more than a decade before the MACG version, the colors are more vivid and primary. The overall mood is more glaring, perhaps even more violent, than the later version. 

                                    José Clemente Orozco. Christ Destroying His Cross. 1932. Dartmouth College. 

Do either of these images speak to your understanding of what Jesus did on Easter? Though the composition does not use the traditional imagery of Easter morning, both show a more demonstrative, more active Jesus as his life, death and resurrection changes the world.

For thoughts on the followers who came to the tomb, click here.

For thoughts on Easter and the calendar, click here.

For thoughts on Jesus' words to Mary, click here.

Art&Faith Matters Facebook page this week is a different approach to a visual element of Easter worship. Take a look.

Acts 8.26-40: The Eunuch's Legacy

The Ethiopians appear in both Hebrew and Christian scriptures. In Christian scripture, Ethiopia only appears once, in the Acts reading for Easter 5B (Acts 8:26-40). In this reading, a court official from Ethiopia is met on the road by the disciple Philip. The two read scripture together, and the official is baptized. With this encounter, Christianity is introduced to, if not the entire country of Ethiopia, at least to one Ethiopian. It is from this meeting that the tradition of Christianity in Ethiopia flows.

  

(Left) Processional cross (Gondar). Late 18th century. Brass. Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta, GA. http://www.carlos.emory.edu/content/processional-cross (Right) Processional Cross. 15th century. Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, MD. http://art.thewalters.org/detail/4545/processional-cross/

One of the most striking class of art objects of Ethiopian Christianity are the processional crosses, crafted so that the metal cross can be put on a pole or shaft and carried through the streets of a town or even just around the place of worship. Sometimes made of white metal but also found in brass and bronze, the processional crosses were often decorated with swaths of fabric, slipped through the metal rings found on both sides of the metal housing for the wooden shaft. As the cross is carried through the streets (or sanctuary), the fabric - perhaps an echo of Mary's veil - flutters in the breeze, bringing additional life and movement to the cross. The design of the shaft also means that the cross can stand on its own, without a pole.

The crosses have a variety of designs and shapes, some related to the geographical origins of the cross. In general, the Lalibela crosses are oval, the Gondar crosses are circular, and the Axum (sometimes Aksum) most similar to the shape of a cross. The cross designs began developing as early as the 12th century, though very early crosses are expectedly rare.

(Left) Processional Cross (Axum). 14th or 15th century. Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. http://museum.cornell.edu/collections/view/ethiopian-processional-cross.html (Right) Processional Cross (Lalibela). Believed to be 12th century. Bet Medhane Alem, Lalibela, Ethiopia.

The bronze crosses have been made using the lost wax method. In that process, a wax cross is created and then encased in clay, which is baked. In the baking, the clay hardens, creating a mold of the wax original, but the wax itself melts and runs. Molten metal is poured into the cooled clay mold. After the metal is cooled, the clay mold is broken, making every cross a unique object - as both the wax original and the clay mold are destroyed in the process.

Scripture places Ethiopia's historical Christian roots firmly in the apostolic age, giving the people of Ethiopia a Christian tradition that is millennia old. By the fourth century, Ethiopia is officially Christian. From that time, Ethiopian Christians have used many forms of the cross - Greek cross, Latin cross, cross pattee - but they have made them their own, and in doing so have created a distinct witness to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

This week's Art&Faith Matters post on Facebook gives you the link to these Christian churches in Ethiopia. Definitely unlike anything you have seen elsewhere. Click on the link.

For thoughts on John 15.1-8, click here.

John 12.20-33: Seeds

Unless a grain falls into the earth and dies, it's just a single grain. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. That's part of the gospel reading for Lent 5B (John 12:20-33). It's clearly a reference to the resurrection, in the Basilica of San Francesco in Arezzo, Italy, Piero della Francesca illustrates a legend that puts an interesting spin on the resurrection, on seeds and what grows from them and on the crucifixion.

The Golden Legend, a 13th-century work by Jacopus de Voragine, tells the story of the True Cross. According to this legend, the wood for the cross on which Christ was crucified begins with Adam. Piero tells the story this way: when Adam was close to death, he sent his son Seth to the gates of Paradise where the Archangel Michael gave Seth seeds from the very tree under which Adam and Eve had first sinned. Seth was told to take the seeds and relay the message that when the seeds grew into a tree that bore fruit, then Adam would be healthy again.

Using continuous narration (more than one episode of a story appears in the same panel), the artist sets the legend's opening scenes. At the lunette's right, Adam sits on the ground, surrounded by his children, instructing Seth. In a background scene at the center, Seth meets with Michael. At the left is Adam's burial. He has been laid on the ground at his grave, and Seth leans down to put the seeds in Adam's mouth.

The Burial of Adam, part of the Finding of the True Cross. 1452-1466. Fresco cycle. 

Basilica di San Francesco, Arezzo, Italy. http://www.museistataliarezzo.it/museo-san-francesco

The seeds will grow into the tree at the lunette's center. Though plaster loss deprives us of half the tree, enough remains that we see a tree bearing neither leaves nor fruit. That tree will become a bridge (a literal bridge, not a literary, theological or metaphorical one) in the story of Solomon and Sheba before the wood is discarded, lost and forgotten. Through miraculous happenings, it is found again, and the wood becomes the cross on which Jesus will be crucified. And in that cross, Adam is indeed healed.

Piero's fresco cycle continues telling the story to the cross' finding by Helena, mother of Roman emperor Constantine. The details of the story are, of course, legend, not scripture. But it is legend following themes set out by early Christian writers. In the epistles we read of Christ as the last Adam (I Corinthians 1:45), and we hear mention of first fruits, and we are reminded that Jesus was "hanged" on a tree (Galatians 3:13). Piero's fresco cycle at least gives us a visual entree into the things that tie the first Adam to the last.

Unless a seed falls to the earth and dies, it's just a seed. But the right seed, if planted, bears good fruit.

 
This week's reading from Jeremiah brings the word of God that promises a covenant written on the hearts of people. Get a closer look at the beautiful contemporary piece shown here (and discover the artist who created it) at the Art&Faith Matters FB page here.

See Food&Faith's look at hyssop and wheatberries by clicking on the link.

For additional thoughts on Jeremiah 31:31-34, click here.

Lifted Up

The verses before the familiar John 3:16 recall the text from Numbers 21 that is the Lent 4B reading from Hebrew scripture. Moses is instructed to make a metal snake and place it on a pole (which brings to mind the prohibition of images in the second word of the decalogue...but that's another post). Anyone who is "snakebit" only has to look at the image and be healed. That episode is what is called to mind before we are reminded of how much God loved the world (John 3:13-22).

Today, atop Mount Nebo is a sculpture by Italian artist Giovanni Fantoni. Mount Nebo is identified in the last chapter of Deuteronomy as the vantage point from which Moses is given a view into the Promised Land. Fantoni's sculpture, called the Brazen Serpent Sculpture (also Serpent Cross Sculpture), illustrates the story from Numbers but overlays it with Christ's crucifixion. The large metal piece features simplified forms expressed through various textures, lines and combinations of forms.

 

Brazen Serpent Sculpture by Giovanni Fantoni on Mount Nebo

Placed by the Franciscans at their friary on Nebo, the sculpture easily reads as the crucifixion from a distance. It's form also bears a resemblance to the staurogram, a letterform combination of the Greek letters tau and rho. The tau resembles an uppercase T while the rho resembles the uppercase P. Superimposed over one another, the letters resemble a crucified figure on a tau cross (a cross shaped like an uppercase T). The two letters are both part of stauros, Greek for "cross" (stauroo is "to crucify"). Scribes began to use the graphic shortcut as the abbreviation for cross or crucifixion in Greek texts.

Iconography ("image writing") at its most basic, the staurogram has been advanced as the earliest depiction of the crucifixion, which also puts this small symbol at the very beginning of Christian art and symbolism.

These texts, objects and images trace the cross from a Mosaic antecedent through earliest Christian reflection on Christ's cross and crucifixion through contemporary expressions of the stories of our faith. As we move through Lent toward Good Friday, the cross looms larger and larger, just as it loomed over Jesus as he moved closer and closer to Jerusalem.

A rooster, a tortoise and Ephesians. See how it all comes together on Art&Faith Matters on Facebook. Click on this link. 

For additional A&FM thoughts on the Lent 4B readings, click here.

Mark 8.31-38: I Have a Cross...You, Too?

Take up your cross and follow. That's one of the familiar phrases from the gospel reading for Lent 2B (Mark 8:31-38). An image search for the phrase yields many, many (many!) silhouetted figures against a sunset. The icon below offers a different visual as saints take up their crosses and follow Jesus. Like all icons, space is not dealt with realistically. Human figures do get smaller as they recede back in space, but there are only half-figures - no legs extend below any of the cross bars. But the intent is clear in the text in the top right quadrant of Christ's cross: 

ἀπαρνησάσθω ἑαυτὸν ἀράτω καὶ σταυρὸν αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀκολουθείτω μοι

let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me

The placement and pattern of the crosses calls to mind the pattern of the polystavrion (poly- "many", stauros, "cross"), the liturgical vestment worn by bishops and pictured in the icon below (The Three Holy Hierarchs - Sts. Basil the Great, John Chrysostom and Gregory the Theologian). The tessellated crosses and repeated patterns create a bold geometric graphic that looks quite modern. 

But more than just the modern feel, those cross-covered vestments might help us think about the gospel reading in a new way. The icon of those who have taken up their crosses might be merged with the cross-covered vestments. Those wearing the vestments might be helping to carry the crosses of their brothers and sisters in Christ who have taken up their own cross and are following Jesus. While Jesus said that each of us must take up our own cross, is it not true that as followers of Christ, as children of God, we do not follow alone. Rather, borrowing from a well-known rock band, we get to carry each other...or at least share in the carrying of each other's crosses. We get to.

Perhaps a fabric artist in your congregation could help design and fabricate a quilt to embody this idea. People could create "their" cross - perhaps just the cross with their name - in a block that is part of a quilt that moves from one member's home to another, reminding us that we each carry our own cross and share in carrying one another's.

Black and white image from asimplelife Quilts: http://asimplelifequilts.blogspot.com/2014/02/plus-value.html

Check Art&Faith Matters' Facebook page to think about a time when someone helped Jesus carry his cross.
For thoughts on the reading from Hebrew scripture for Lent 2B (Genesis 8:1-17), click here.