How the sign of the ‘Lesser Light’ points to the noonday splendor of the glory of God
By long tradition the Christmas season has, for Christians, been associated with the night sky, and one heavenly body in particular. There, against the deep night of the winter solstice, the star of Bethlehem glints and flickers forth a subtle beam of hope; the long dark has not conquered.
As moderns, we are not so accustomed to associate celestial lights with Good Friday, though this too has a long tradition. In fact, the moon and its cycles played a central role in the early church’s wrestling with when to set the yearly date for the remembrance of Holy Week leading up to Easter. That discussion about when to celebrate Holy Week was, shall we say, astronomically complicated. Here is the short version.
The gospel writers all affirm that the arrest and passion of Jesus took place around the celebration of the Jewish festival of Passover. In accordance with the Hebrew Scriptures, the Passover began after the setting of the sun on the fourteenth day of the first month (Nisan) of the Hebrew calendar. Now, just prior to the setting of the sun on the fourteenth, and the celebration of the Passover, a sacrificial animal was slain. This ensured that the Passover feast would commence on the fifteenth day of Nisan.
The days and times of this sacrifice and feast were very significant. The Hebrew calendar followed the moon’s cycles rather than the sun’s. As we’ve just noted, the month of Nisan was the first month of the Hebrew calendar, which began around the Spring equinox (that puts Nisan around late March on our current calendar). Because they followed the lunar cycles (rather than the solar cycles), the Hebrews ensured that every year the fourteenth day of Nisan would fall on the day that the moon was at its very last stage of waxing, the very last day before the first full moon of the new year (and the first full moon after the Spring equinox). That meant that on the fourteenth of Nisan, the last sliver of dark clung to the moon. And on the fifteenth, that last remnant had been vanquished in full lunar splendor.
But, even more significant, because this was the first full moon after the Spring equinox, it meant that the rising of that full moon took place just prior to the sun’s setting. They overlapped. And similarly in the morning, when the sun rose, the full moon was still shown in the early morning skies. The symbolic nature of this full day of shadowless light that marked the beginning of a new year was not lost on the Jews. Here is one first century Jewish commentator:
The feast begins at the middle of the month, on the fifteenth day, when the moon is full, a day purposely chosen because then there is no darkness, but everything is continuously lighted up as the sun shines from morning to evening and the moon from evening to morning…
This first feast of the new year was a celebration of the light’s victory over darkness, a fitting commemoration of the new beginnings God had wrought for his people by liberating them from slavery in Egypt.
That, as I say, was the Hebrew celebration of the Passover. And that, according to the Gospel writers, was the time and setting of the arrest and execution of Christ. It was for this reason that the early Christians looked again to the heavens in order to set the time and season for the yearly commemoration of Christ’s passion and resurrection. Just as the winter solstice and the star of Bethlehem came to appoint the Christmas season, so also the Spring equinox and its first full moon were taken as heavenly signs of Christ’s work of mercy on behalf of sinners.
As for the Jews at Passover, for early Christians, the symbolism of this lunar event was potent. Luke tells us that Jesus gathered with his disciples on the day “on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed” (Luke 22:7). This was the final day of the old moon cycle. Jesus himself would be the Passover lamb on this day (1 Cor. 5:7), and his death the last shadow still clinging to that old order. Yet, as Jesus taught, it was precisely by suffering this shadow of death on this night that he would cast out death and the ruler of it (John 12:31; Heb. 2:14). The last sliver of dark clinging to the moon on the fourteenth of Nisan must give way to the full moon of the fifteenth. Sin and death, which belonged to the old age, will be conquered by Christ, who was about to rise full.
Thus, even the night sky proclaims the work of God’s hands. Thus, we are reminded why Good Friday matters still. Good Friday reminds us that Christians live now in hope. Good Friday hope is directed toward the resurrection. The eye of Good Friday hope, we might say, gazes confidently at the splendor of the full moon. Having been victorious over its own shadows, it has issued in a new age.
But the light of the moon is, according to Genesis, the “lesser” light. And so even it directs our attention to yet a greater light. The moon shines full in Christ’s resurrection, it shines still in the night. We wait for the fullness of the noonday sun. In this way, our Good Friday hope in Christ’s resurrection turns our gaze to the second coming, to the consummation of all things, to the ultimate light, which is the glory of God (Rev. 21:23).