Now the Green Blade Riseth

Georgie in the bishop’s chair before services recently. (Photo credit Don Binder)

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Georgie came flying into the sacristy while I was setting up for eucharist last week on yet another chilly, dark, and rainy Jerusalem morning. He went straight for Dean Hosam’s vestment closet. Georgie, we’ve had this conversation already, I said. This is not good! Even if you had a liturgical role in the service, the Dean’s vestments would never fit you!

Georgie has grown into a significant presence on the Close and has an uncanny ability to appear unannounced at unusual times and in unexpected places. His quiet confidence and serene expectation give the impression that we are all his guests here. It’s not easy to back Georgie down on these assumptions, as his C.V. really does check out. Dean Hosam confirms that Georgie was featured on the documentary filmed in the Cathedral a couple of weeks ago, and he hasn’t missed a College course photograph since September. I’d assumed he’d hired a publicist.

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I might have left my apartment door open for five minutes while I ran across the hall to the chaplain’s office and returned to discover Georgie at his repose.

Georgie keeps a packed schedule in the Guest House also, and is seen here consulting with renowned TEC canon lawyer Bradfute W. Davenport, Esq.

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But even with Georgie’s bold presumption last week, I could tell something was on his mind. I could see some strain in his confidence – some hesitation in his step – and I had the growing suspicion that I knew what it might be.

I had seen the signs myself, that heavy portent that comes at the tail end of a long, dark winter. We have a deepening sense that any moment the daily rains will stop, the clouds will lift, the weather will warm. The roses and hollyhocks will burst forth, and the baby lambs will be born. But then, after the tease of a pretty, clear morning, or that day you don’t need a sweater in the afternoon, the weather goes cold and gusty again. Our confidence is shaken.

In that liminal season, with the air chilled, and the weather returning to cold rain quickly, we still feel the persistent hope of shortening days — the immediacy of coming spring – bringing lilacs out of the dead lands.

T. S. Eliot wrote that April is the cruelest month for this very reason. April is the cruelest month because it mixes memory and desire. April is almost always at the very end of Lent, as it was this year, and April is cruel because, even with the memory of the past warmth of summer and the intense yearning for spring, the cold and dark of winter often lingers.

Georgie, Natalie’s expecting, isn’t she? I asked, looking at him intently. He stared back, silent and implacable. I had seen the changes in Natalie, but it hadn’t occurred to me until then that Georgie was the father. Natalie is mostly white, with touches of marmalade on the tips of her ears, feet, and tail, and until fairly recently had been small-boned and quite delicate. I had seen her that morning walking heavily, with a tellingly lumpy belly. It looks like it might be a large litter, and quite soon.

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Baby figs just forming in the Galilee under brand new leaves.

Tiny baby olives remain after new blossoms drop off. Olives are harvested in November, so these are almost seven months from maturity.

Green almonds, a Palestinian delicacy.

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In this moment of winter merging into spring, dry branches into buds, and irises, hollyhocks, and wild poppies rising out of the cold ground, I can’t help but think of one of my favorite Easter hymns. Now the Green Blade Riseth, written by John McCleod Crum in 1926 while he was a canon at Canterbury Cathedral, hints at Crum’s own life story.

Crum was about 54 when he wrote the hymn, remarried after his first wife’s death in childbirth, and the father of 5 more children. Crum had experienced his own seasons of dark winter, brightened by the hope of spring and then new birth.

The imagery of Jesus’ resurrection in the hymn is drawn directly from John 12:23, here in the King James translation Crum used: And Jesus answered them, saying, the hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

We stripped the altar at St. George’s Cathedral tonight after the Maundy Thursday eucharist. I carried the cross through the dark church as the clergy and congregation followed to process on to prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane at the bottom of the Mount of Olives. I walked past the Garden of Gethsemane just this past Sunday – Palm Sunday – as we walked with thousands of pilgrims down the Mount of Olives from Bethphage, following Jesus’ triumphal path into Jerusalem. The earth in the garden had been turned, and was dark and rich-looking – heavy with possibility and hope, but still cold.

Tomorrow we observe Good Friday, and unlike the Eastern Orthodox churches, who experience their Holy Week (one week later than ours) with the joy of a faithful people who know the end of the story already, we will fast and pray, even as the impending resurrection of Easter — a dynamic sense of imminence — vibrates in the air.

This incredible, holy incipience hovers in the earth, like grain that sleeps unseen: Love is come again like wheat that springeth green. Now we wait.

1Now the green blade riseth, from the buried grain,
Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.

2 In the grave they laid Him, Love who had been slain,
Thinking that He never would awake again,
Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen: 
Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.

3 Forth He came at Easter, like the risen grain,
Jesus who for three days in the grave had lain;
Quick from the dead the risen One is seen:
Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.

4 When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain,
Jesus’ 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.