Full Moon Faith

On Sunday evening I walked home from the ecumenical Palm Sunday service held at one of the other churches in town. The worship experience was fine but it was the night sky that moved me. The cloud cover was heavy but broke from time to time to reveal a luminous, almost-full moon. Of course last night was the full moon and the beginning of Passover for Jews. Our Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon following the Spring Equinox.

It struck me that nearly two thousand years ago Jesus was in an olive grove, anguishing over his fate. He is often depicted in art as praying with head bent, while the disciples sleep around him. What if Jesus was looking up at the sky and considering the constellations and that Passover moon for the last time in his human experience? I assume that Jesus and his followers slept under the stars often as they travelled. The olive grove in the Kidron Valley was where many pilgrims camped out during the Passover.

We're told early in Mark's gospel that Jesus would arise early to pray and surely he would have noticed the heavens as he climbed the Galilean hillsides. Saying farewell to this life was not easy. Another of of the gospels suggests that Jesus sweat blood as he considered what was before him.

This week we will remember Christ's love "so amazing, so divine." We can also allow Jesus to be human, and in that humanity letting go of the simple pleasures, the beauty of this planet and the stretches of the skies. It makes me even more grateful for the gift of new life Christ brings.