YOU LOOK GOOD IN GREEN

 

“The same spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in you.”  (Romans 8:11)

 

“We believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord.  Who was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.  He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried.  He descended to the dead.  The third day he rose again.”  (The Apostle’s Creed)

 

I am glad that Easter is a season and not just a day.  We spend all of Lent anticipating the glorious rising of Easter morning and the good news is that we will spend the next fifty days in “Eastertide” which will move us into Pentecost.

 

In the Western church we often understand Christ’s resurrection as the salvation of the individual by sacrifice on the cross and the defeat of death.  Christ rises triumphant from the tomb for our personal transformation.  But in the Eastern Orthodox tradition the resurrection has cosmic significance.  Professor Wendy Wright indicates that the “transfiguration of the entire world” takes place through the “descending-ascending process of God becoming what we are and our becoming what God is.”

 

For the Eastern Orthodox Church resurrection is not so much a rising as it is a penetration.  The traditional icon for the feast of Easter in this tradition is “The Descent Into Hell.”  Rather than imaging Christ as rising victorious from the tomb, it is an image of Christ riding the cross into the depths of the earth.  Wright goes on to say, “Thus Christ is seen to enter so profoundly into the human condition and into creation itself, that he penetrates the deepest realm of sin and death.”

 

This icon depicts Christ riding on the cross into the belly of the earth.  The descent opens up and exposes the deepest recesses of creation and exposes them to the light of heaven.  The Saints accompany Christ and bear witness as he reaches out to the inhabitants of this place.

 

Many of us recite the Apostle’s Creed every Sunday in worship and I wonder if we ever linger over the line that states, “Christ descended to the dead.”  If we do we think of Christ offering one last chance to those who died before his resurrection. What if this descent is ongoing?  Through the resurrection Christ descends—penetrates—our humanity and the depths of creation and extends his hand to work a new thing in the very core.

 

I am glad that Easter is not just a day and I am also glad for the spring, because the green of the trees and the lush foliage and colorful flowers remind me upon everyday of my rising that the resurrection spirit of Christ has been set loose in the world, enlivening all of creation. It is what that great woman mystic Hildegard of Bingen called ‘viriditas’ the greening of all creation.

 

For the next fifty days I invite you to substitute the words ‘dying’ and ‘rising’ with ‘permeating’ and ‘penetrating’ and see if you don’t experience resurrection and spring in some new and profound ways.  I think we will find that we all look good in green.