Theology Department
St. Stephen's
Episcopal School
Austin, Texas

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-the episcopal church

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-theology 8
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Easter Threads

Crossroads
Among the patterns of religious life we find the simple intersection of travel routes -- trail, stream, road, river, highway -- the crossroad, the turning point, as a literal fact with which we are all familiar, and as a symbol. The image comes up in Stone Age cultures and in modern industrial cultures, in creative endeavors, including living one's life. As we travel on our journey, naturally we come to many crossroads. We meet strangers, confront dangers, consider new ideas, face temptations, measure our courage, make a choice. And we can take only one road. The crossroad can include a vertical element. Thus the intersections are multi-dimensional: the path a dove traces dipping over a river, the orbit of a star, the trajectory of the sun, the intersections of dawn and dusk, where the Milky Way meets the horizon, the Sacred breaking through ordinary life and manifesting itself, or a person for some reason suddenly seeing things differently -- a person's way of thinking changes, deliberately or not, from one way of perceiving and responding to the world to another way. The crossroads implies the meeting of contradictory paths, colliding at the intersection, a metaphor for the mystery of Something unimaginable that embraces seeming opposites, where paradox is held in the balance. So next time you're on a walk, note: the ways we walk are subject to change as our journeys bring us to points of decision-making. We then depart on a journey that is somehow new. Moving on, we turn our heads for a last glimpse, glance in the rear view mirror, read about it in a history text, remember it vividly in our mind's eye, a point in time and space where a choice was made, and to which we cannot return. This is one way of understanding a number of traditions, the path of the pilgrim within the tradition, the underlying patterns, and the power of simple literal visual images of crossroads, among the oldest the cross.

Easter
Easter is the earliest of Christian feasts, the biggest celebration. "Easter" probably comes from the Norse word for spring, Eostur, but possibly from the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, Eostre. In Romance languages "Easter" is derived from the Hebrew Pesah (Passover), and Easter is its equivalent, a spring feast celebrating both the harvest and the deliverance. Fire and light are central, as seen in the Great Vigil of Easter in the Book of Common Prayer. Early in the Church's history whole towns would be lit up with lamps and torches the Saturday night before Easter. This custom coincided with the pre-Christian tradition of hilltop bonfires celebrating the arrival of spring in N. Europe; from this practice comes the Easter bonfire found in Western Christian Easter Vigils -- for example, on a hilltop outside Fredericksburg. Note the big Easter candle in the Chapel, candlelight processions, and the importance of dawn. Early on Easter became the most auspicious time to be baptised. Fire and light are complemented by the universal pattern of water, particularly through the Middle Ages, when adult baptisms were relatively common. Baptism is part of the Vigil, followed by the Eucharist. The color of Easter is white -- those being baptised often wore white garments, and today many Christians wear white to the service.

Rabbits?
In the Mediterranean world, rabbits were a symbol of fertility, death, immortality, and more. Pre-Christians depicted rabbits on gravestones, perhaps believing that "love" conquers death, and that rabbits symbolize a form of love. Christians came along & assimilated some of the ideas and motifs, such as the rabbit. Culture after culture reflects the presence of the rabbit or hare -- the "rabbit in the moon" & other rabbit themes & motifs in the Americas, China, India, Japan, Africa, etc.

Eggs?
In some of the earliest religious creation stories, eggs are central. An Egyptian document dating to 1500 B.C. refers to a "world egg" that emerged from the primeval waters, and several Egyptian deities are associated with the egg -- the moon god, Thoth, the sun god, Ra, the celestial goose, Seb, etc. In Hindu scripture the creation of our world is thought to have begun with the breaking in two of a cosmic egg, brought into being when the waters of creation are fertilized by the god of creation, Prajapati. In China the first man emerged from the cosmic egg. In the South Pacific a common theme is that the islands hatched from the egg of a divine bird. Aborigines in Australia thought the sun emerged from an emu egg thrown into the air. Eggs figure in the Jewish tradition (a roasted egg at Seder; the Lag ba-'Omer festival honoring Rabbi Shim'on bar Yohai, when eggs are dyed various colors to signify the rainbow symbolizing God's promise to Noah). So:
Imagine Mr. & Mrs. Cro-magnon sitting around in the year 10,000 B.C., rough hands and sensitive eyes taking in the smooth feel, pleasing shape, life-holding power of these little elliptical items. An egg cracks, a creature bursts forth. How natural that the marvelous sight of a life emerging from a seemingly hard and inanimate egg should connect to big questions, and that the object itself should be found in culture after culture, connoting a power all its own while its context, the surrounding tradition, changes.
Eggs go back quite a ways in relation to Christianity. Beginning around 200 A.D. Christians began adopting the fast of Lent, renouncing eggs among other foods. Having been given up for the fast, it makes sense that eggs would play a role in the festival celebration of Easter, as Lent comes to an end. They keep showing up through history: two goose eggs decorated with stripes and dots found in a grave dated to 320 A.D. in Germany; it's unclear if the deceased was a Christian. Before 1000 A.D. in what is now Poland the local Christians were decorating eggs. In 1290 King Edward I of England spent big bucks (18 pence) to decorate Easter Eggs with gold leaf to present to members of his court. In Russia, Easter Sunday is when the dead are remembered, and it's common for families to visit cemeteries and sit near the graves of loved ones, eating red eggs, scattering the shells on the soil. In the Middle Ages it was common to place colored eggs in the replica of Christ's tomb; sometimes priests placed the colored eggs on the altar while greeting each other, saying "Christ is risen."
The images linger: a bird breaking from its shell, the potency of living things, fertility rampant everywhere, the purity of new life, the enigma of rebirth, the mystery of how life comes into being, a man rising from a tomb. A fresh and powerful symbol of how life ends, and how death creates new life in the shimmering web of nature and spirit. No life without death; no death unrelated to life to come.

Freely adapted from the The Encyclopedia of Religion.