Trooping the Color
How I would love to be present at the Trooping of the Color of the Household Guard in London someday. I’ve seen it on film and it’s quite stirring, solemnly so. It happens once a year I’ve been told (on the Queen’s birthday?). The infantry, including the Grenadier Guards, attired in their red coats and high black bearskin headpieces, are assembled on a grand parade ground. The purpose of the ceremonial march is to familiarize the soldiers with their regimental flag – which in the old days was the rallying standard in the midst of battle; it told you where you had to be, to be a part of a cohesive force. After the standard bearers march down the lines of soldiers standing at attention, the whole regiment begins to parade before the Queen, eyes right in salute – performing what is called the slow step – a kind of forward, yet hesitant advance – kind of a broken rhythm that is mesmerizing to watch.
Battle flags were important before modern warfare made them merely decorative. As a boy I visited the Doylestown Museum in Bucks County, Pennsylvania – and stood in awe of the regimental banner of the 104th Regiment – torn by shot and shell during the Civil War, inscribed with the names of battles in which it had been carried in the van of the soldiers: Chickahominy, White Oak Swamp, Fair Oaks, Lee’s Mills . . . You wanted to touch it for whatever reason – as something holy?
In today’s Cycle B Gospel reading Jesus speaks of himself as being lifted up like a banner, a rallying point, referring as he does to the staff God gave Moses during Israel’s long trek from Egypt to the Promised Land. It’s the same staff Moses lifted up to make the waters of the Red Sea part. It’s the same staff he used to strike a rock to provide water to his parched people in the desert. It’s the same staff around which he entwined a copper snake and held it aloft to heal snake bitten Israelites. And it’s the same staff or banner that he held aloft with the help of Aaron and Hur (as his color guard) until sunset while the Israelites defeated the Amalekites – their battle cry being: “The Lord is my banner”.
In comparing himself to that staff or banner raised by Moses in the desert, Jesus alludes to the raising of himself upon the cross as the raising of a new banner, an ultimate rallying point beneath which the human race may stand up to whatever twisted thinking would poison our minds and imaginations, would prefer death over life, fatalism over faith, hope and love in this world.
In my younger days I used to waver when Lent came around – with all its purple and veiled statues and bland meals and mood of sorrow – while the whole of nature was coming alive with warmth and color. We made it a mournful season – when in fact the Passion story can be read as Christ’s assault upon the fact of Death that broods over us and “makes cowards of us all” — Death too often embodied in the powers that be (Caiaphas and Pilate) – over whom Christ wins out on Easter Sunday – a day of victory. What’s that ancient hymn the Church chants on Palm Sunday – the “Vexilla Regis”? Abroad the royal banners fly / And bear the gleaming Cross on high / Whereon Life suffered death / And gave us life with dying breath.
Anyone want to join up, be recruited to do the ceremonial slow step behind him who said, And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all things to myself?