Good Friday

How do Christians cope with Good Friday?  They proclaim that Christ was killed on the cross and pretend for a day or two that this was the end.  And then, hey presto, up he pops again, conquering death – allegedly.  To take this myth as literal is absurd and yet, the power of the Easter Narrative has given us some of the greatest works of Art.  If I have any belief in eternal life, it is that the truths behind the Gospel stories remain as vital as they have always been.

The Fetternear Banner dates from the 16^th C. and has remained in remarkably good fettle for some 500 years.  Most of the dyes, using vegetable dyestuffs, have retained their vibrant colours; and the double-sided stitching (a costly process) using silk threads has only been eroded where iron dyes were used for creating black thread.  There are many familiar symbols – the scallop shell, the dice, the reed, the cockerel – but the most striking element is in the characters. And it is these people with whom we continue to identify, to this day. 

Christ’s flagellated body is gruesome; Judas’s purse around his neck becomes a noose as he dolefully contemplates his fate; and the scornful look of the Spitting Jew as he puckers up to hurl his insult at Christ is pitiful, on many levels.  I cannot hope to compete with John Donne’s Holy Sonnet XI, but have attempted, in the spirit of the metaphysical, a pun on die/dying/dye.  Even if we don’t believe in what some think the church calls God, we still have Art, for all eternity.

Casting Die

Christians shouted loud Hosannas.

Railing against a cruel world,

I raised the Fetternear Banner.

Stitched up, whipped against a pillar,

flayed and frayed I felt his wounds.

Cockerels crew against the clamour

of spitting Jews; I gobbed my phlegm

at the Kirk by the Heart of Midlothian.

Pincers ripped out nails secured by hammer;

a Dove descended as the dye was cast.