On the eighth day

"And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb."

- Mark 16.2

The earliest Christians were Jews, for whom the weekly Sabbath represented the goal of creation, the seventh day on which God had rested, the day divinely sanctified as a promise of the ultimate rest of all creation. As Augustine noted, the account in Genesis which culminates on the seventh day includes a breaking of the pattern of the other six days. They all have morning and evening and go on to yet another day, but the seventh day has no evening, no end.

And so each Sabbath held out the hope of something beyond the week, towards which the week continually strained. Yet each weekly Sabbath would give way once again to the start of a new cycle of seven. No particular Sabbath brought the cycle to its close. Each week would lead to another, much the same. And one week would join to another. And Summer would give way to Autumn to Winter and so it goes. But each Winter leads to a Spring. Each night is followed by a dawn.

This natural cycle of days, and weeks and seasons might serve as a lesson for us. Nothing is to be taken with deadly seriousness since no Winter, no matter how cold, will fail to eventually give way to Spring. No night, no matter how dark, will lack a dawn. Perhaps we need to learn to see all of life in the light of these cycles of decay and renewal, of darkness and light, and to appreciate the fact that the failures of one generation are not final, but may always be renovated and restored. And by the same token, we must come to accept that the achievements of a day, however glorious, will pass away into night.

Indeed, the symbolism of Easter, with its eggs and flowers, and as a festival of Spring (at least in the northern hemisphere where it began) might be taken to refer to the endless renewal of hope after despair, that, generally speaking, death-like experiences are succeeded by new possibilities.

But into this cycle is thrown the spanner of resurrection.

The resurrection of Jesus is not a symbol of the endless renewal of life after decay, of another generation rising up to take the place of those who pass away, of the transience of darkness. For it is not, primarily, a symbol at all. The resurrection of Jesus is an event, in fact the event that makes events possible. The resurrection is an interruption of the world's order, a new beginning, not the first in yet another cycle, but a new history bursting in upon the old, new wine that ruptures any attempt to contain it amidst the old.

Very early on the first day of the week, the women travel to the tomb, but already God has acted. They arrive after the event. The new world has already begun before they awoke. The Sabbath they kept has not passed away into yet another week. This is not just the first day, but the eighth day of the week. Neither nature's cycles nor history's patterns know anything like this. There is now something new under the sun...

One thousand

This is my 1,000th post. What are the chances of making it to 2,000?

100,000

Depending which counter you look at, nothing new under the sun passed 100,000 hits around 8 pm last night. About two hours earlier, my wife's website also passed 100,000. This site took eighteen months; hers took six days. Thanks for visiting!
As best I can work out, the 100,000th page load came from someone in Perth running Windows XP. If you think this might be you, post (or email) your IP address for twenty points.

"There is nothing new under the sun"

What does it mean?
Well, it's been over a year since I started this blog, and I've just realised that I had never attempted to explain my title. I seem to get a number of people ending up here after googling "What does 'there is nothing new under the sun' mean?" and similar questions, so I thought I'd offer my take on the phrase.

It originated in the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes:

What has been will be again,
     what has been done will be done again;
     there is nothing new under the sun.

Indeed, this verse appears as part of the famous opening passage of that book:

The words of the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher,
     vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What do people gain from all the toil
     at which they toil under the sun?
A generation goes, and a generation comes,
     but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises and the sun goes down,
     and hurries to the place where it rises.
The wind blows to the south,
     and goes around to the north;
round and round goes the wind,
     and on its circuits the wind returns.
All streams run to the sea,
     but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
     there they continue to flow.
All things are wearisome;
     more than one can express;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
     or the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be,
     and what has been done is what will be done;
     there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
     “See, this is new”?
It has already been,
     in the ages before us.
The people of long ago are not remembered,
     nor will there be any remembrance of people yet to come
     by those who come after them.

Ecclesiastes is famous for its pessimism, its repeated claim that everything is hebel: mist, vapour, empty, transitory and unsatisfying - vanity. Life under the sun is filled with injustice, repeated disappointment, the same old same old. And this is just as true for someone who believes in God as it is for everyone else. Religion brings no guaranteed safety against absurdity and futility. There is nothing new under the sun.

Discovering this perspective in the Bible is usually a surprise when people first stumble upon it. It's not what we expect to hear. Doesn't God provide meaning and purpose, safety and joy? Why do anything at all if Ecclesiastes is correct? Why was this downer of a book left in? The fact that it was, and that it continues to provide an authorised testimony to what life is like, ought to make us pause in our construction of neat theological systems (or caricatures, if that's more your taste).

Yet Ecclesiastes is also a surprise because it is so refreshingly honest, so frequently accurate to our experience of life. Things do fall apart, whether objects, buildings, bodies, relationships or communities. We do repeat yesterday's mistakes. The sun keeps rising on the same old injustices. Sure, we might now have microchip technology and be able to hit a golf ball on the moon, but we still get bored at work, and whether you're wise or a fool, your heartbeats are still numbered. There is nothing new under the sun.

Yet despite his pessimism (or refreshing realism, depending on your taste), the teacher doesn't offer a council of despair. He doesn't throw up in his hands in nihilistic quietim - "why bother?". He still realises that the best thing to do is to continue to throw yourself into those very things that are hebel, ephemeral and frustrating: work and relationships, celebration and mourning.

I love the book of Ecclesiastes. There is nothing new under the sun.

Yet there is more to come.
Second photo by CAC.