Radio Script #223

Little Talks On Common Things
April 18, 1954

In accordance with the custom we have observed on this program since 1949, tonight’s broadcast will be devoted to Easter. From its beginning, Little Talks on Common Things has been scheduled for Sunday. When one of those Sundays is the most sacred day of the Christian year, we prefer to recognize it. So tonight we are thinking not so much about old days in the Kennebec Val ley and elsewhere in Maine as we are about the meaning of the Easter message for this and any other time.

Obviously we need that message today. The fighting war in Korea has stopped, but co I d war that at any moment may break out into hot war is very much with us. In IndO-China, in Egypt, in India-Pakistan, in the very valley of the Jordan where Jesus once walked, are powder kegs of war. Any day American boys may be going into battle again. Less than forty days ago, when the Lenten season had already begun, we learned of the i ncredi b Ie destructi on wrought by the new hydrogen bomb, so unbelievably vast that its extended use in warfare would almost certainly mean the end of civi lization. When in thousands of years on earth man seems to have learned little more than how to ki II his fellow men more efficiently, more horribly. and in immensely greater numbers, we may well ask God the question asked Him by the Hebrew psalmist, “What Is man, that Thou are mindful of him?”

Into our time of fear, frustration and folly comes the Easter message, not of fear but of faith, not of frustration but of hope, not of death but of life. The gtod ouscry of Easter is th is: that wh i ch was dead sti II lives. The last lone hope of the Gall lean disciples had been nai led to a Roman cross of grim despair. It had been confined to a dark, si lent tomb in Gethsemane. Then someth i ng happened TO change despa i r to hope. defeat TO vi cTory. That which was dead sti I I lived. Out of death had come life. What is man that Thou are mindful of him? Man is the embodiment of life — life to be made eterna I because the Angel of the Lord rolled away the stone from the door.

Without death life cannot continue. That Is an important fact of Easter.

Let us see what it means. Jesus once sa i d, “Un less a gra I n of corn fa lis into the ground and die, it remains alone. But if it dies, iT brings forth much fruit.” That is the way Jesus summed up the truth that is so hard for us to accept — the Truth thaT life is ever dependent upon death. Before iT comes to life as a plant, the seed must be buried in the earth. Before it can soar a lofT on butterf Iy wi ngs, the caterp i liar must enter the long sleep in its chrysalis tomb. Before the awakening of spring, the earth is shrouded in the cold death of winter.

The biologist knows how true it is that life is dependent upon death. He sees it in the carbon and nitrogen cycles of the plants. Photosynthesis, the miraculous way plants manufacture their own food cannot take place without carbon dioxide. Yet only 3 parts of the atmosphere in every 10,000 parTs Is carbon dioxide. In less than 40 years plants would use up al I the carbon dioxide in the air if it were not somehow rep I aced. I f a II the carbon in exi stence got locked up in the bodies of plants and animals, all life would stop. How does the rep lacement of used carbon take p lace? A very I ittle gets back into the air through respiration, the ordinary breathing of animals. But by far the most of it gets back by the action of bacteria which begin decomposing plants and animals just as soon as they die. By the action of these bacteria, certain substances in dead bodies of plants and animals are broken down into carbon dioxide and water, and thus return to the soi I and the air to begin a new cyc Ie.

The biologists cal I the life substance — the stuff which distinguishes living from non-living things, grass from rocks, for instance — the biologists call this stuff protoplasm. It is a very complex protein substance.

And what is an essential, an absolute must of proteins? It is nitrOgen. Where is nitogen found? Its sole storehouse is the supply of nitrates in the earth.

Just as is true of carbon, so must nitrogen get back to the soil; otherwise it would all be locked up in the bodies of plants and animals and all life would cease, Here again it is the bacteria that do the work. By a process involving several steps and several kinds of bacteria, the protein molecules in dead bodies of plants and animals revert back into nitrates so that the cycle can begin a I love raga in.

Everyone knows that without plants there could be no continuance of animals, for even those animals which eat other animals for food, the flesh eaters s distinguished from the plant eaters, would soon be without food if there were no plants, for the animals on which the flesh eaters feed are themselves dependent on plant food.

So this is the great lesson learned by every high school student of biology — that plants and animals have to die in order that life itself may go on.

In ancient times men gathered the precious kernels of grain, then groundthem to death under the gri ndi ng stone. Out of that death came bread, the staff of life. That bread was again burled in the human body, that that body mi ght live and grow. Then that human body i tse r f returned to the earth. There the ancient knowledge stopped. Now we know that the chemicals of that body returned to earth and air, giving life once more to the burled seed. That is the great cycle of life.

A hundred years ago the newspapers pa j d Ii tt Ie attenti on to Easter. Just how long the Easter Parade has been a New York custom I do not know, but the New York papers of 1854 are silent on the subject. In 1859 our own Kennebec Journal made no mention of Easter. Although Its Issue in the week before Eas~ ter in That year contained plenty of church notices and other religious Items, there is no evi dence that Easter was regarded as dl fferent from any other Sunday In the state capital a century ago.

Colby students and their parents often ask why the annual spring vacation does nOT include Easter Sunday. The answer is that Easter Is such a widely shifting date in the calendar that any attempt to adjust the college spring recess TO It would be exceedingly awkward and unwieldy. In some instances, It would make the recess end so late that the remaining time before final examinations would be much too short.

Eas te r sh i fts so wide I y because the date depen ds upon the moon. and th at satelliTe of the earth is a most fickle lady. Many years ago, Colby’s great teacher of German, Dr. Anton Marquardt, fami Ii arly knOtin as “Outchy”, taught me how TO state in German the way Easter is fixed. Believe It ot not, I can stili do it — Den ersten Sontag nach den ersten Vollmond nach den eln und zwanzigsten Maertz — In plain English, the first Sunday after the first full moon following the 21st of March. The almanacs tell you it is the Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox; that is, the time when the sun crosses the equator in the turn from winter to spring. Although that date Is usua I I Y the 21st of March, th I s year It fe II I near Iy afte moon of the 20th.

The March full moon this year came just 24 hours too early to give us an early Easter because the moon reached full on March 19. The next full moon — that is, the fl rst one after the equinox of March 20 — comes on the 18th, but so few minUTes after midnight that, for all practical purposes the moon is full on the 17th. Hence, th I s year the 18th of Apr! I I s Easter Sunday. Next year Easterwill come on April 10, in 1956 itwlll be April 1, then In 1957 It will be a Imost as late as possible, Apri I 21 • Only twice I nthe next ten years wi II Easter come in March — in 1959 on March 29 and in 1964 on the same date.

It is possible for Easter to come as early as March 21 which can happen only once in hundreds of years, when the equinox precedes the ful I moon by only a few hours and both come on March 20. It is very unusual for Easter to come as early as March 22. In fact the earliest date for Easter in the 200 years’ from 1900 to 2100 is March 23, which wi II be Easter Sunday In 2008, and that is the on Iy ti me in the whole two centuries when Easter wi II be earlier than March 24.

Why was Easter fixed in connection with what is called the Paschal full moon, the first full moon after the spring equinox? Allover the early Christian world Easter was a time of great rei igious festivities. In 325 A.D. the famous Counci I of N I cea fixed the date I n accordance with the fu II of the moon because the pi I gri ms trave ling to the festi va I s needed moon light to II qht them on the journey.

Since the reasons for tyi ng Easter to the moon no longer ext st, noth I ng but the habit of tradition forces us to retain the awkwardly shifting date. Perhaps some day we sha II have a defi nl te Iy fl xed Easter, as we have a fl xed Christmas. Ever since 1900 various organizations, notably the International Chamber of Commerce, have passed resolutions favoring a fixed date for Easter.

When the International Chamber met in Rome .in 1923, they addressed to the Pope an ardent resolution to stop the widely ranging date of Easter. In 1925 the matter came up before the League of Nati ons at Geneva, wh i ch proceeded to summon a conference of the Roman, Eastern and Angl ican churches, at which it was agreed that there existed practically unanimous, opinion throughout the Christian world in favor of a fixed Easter. But so binding is the force of custom, and so slow are church dignitaries to consider anything that savors of change, that nothing was done about it.

In 1925 the British Parliament became Interested. A bill was introduced to fix the date of Easter in the Anglican church as regularly the seoond Sunday In Apri I. FI na” yin 1928 Par I lament actua Ily passed a bill statl ng that Easter should always come on the fl rst Sunday following the second Saturday in Aprl I. Why, then, does Easter come in England, just as it comes In America or Italy or France this year on the Sunday following the third Saturday, or as it so happens on the third Sunday? Don’t they obey their own laws in England?

The answer is that the British law contained a joker — the provision that it should not go into effect in England untl I it secured International acceptance.

Not even the British lords and cornrrons wanted to celebrate Easter on a different day from that recognized by the rest of the world. It goes without saying that international acceptance has never been secured, and Easter conti nues to fluctuate over a span of 35 days, just as it has done ever since the Counci I of Nicea 1,629 years ago.

Whether or npt you have been -to church today, you cannot escape the sl gn fficance of Easter. The new life which the risen Christ brings to man is not mere biological life; it is more than the cycles of carbon and nitrogen. The gift of Easter is not bodi Iy life, but spiritual life. But like the life cycle in nature, th is too comes as the frui t of death. The passage from Good Frf day to Easter Sunday is the passage from the gloom of death to the dawn of eternal I I fe.

To S~9J:est that desperate clinging to one’s rrortal I ife, as we all do, Is only delusion, hits many of us as a violation of all common sense. But what did Jesus say? “Except a grain of corn fall Into the ground, It remains alone; but if it die, it brings forth much fruit.” “Whosoever would ~ave his life shall lose it, but he that loses his life shall find it.” The King of Kings and Lord of Lords is born I n a stab Ie manger; he dies on a “torturing cross. Why? Because by that strange contradi ctl on he ful fi lis the seedtime and the harvest, the setting and rising of the sun, the never-ending cycle of the seasons — in a word, he bri ngs out of death eterna I I I fe to man.

Year: 1954