What comes to mind when you think of the colour red?
Red: It lends rubies and roses their alluring charm, coral snakes and fire ants their warning alarm. Whether mountain, or forest, or desert, or sea, it’s the hue nature uses to say, “Notice me.”
To what extent are our thoughts about the colour red captured in this poem? What else comes to mind?
The ‘notice me’ is a key aspect of the colour red. Throughout nature, a more vibrant red attracts more attention – whether to lure the most desirable mate, to offer the ripest fruit, or to issue a warning. For example, bleeding heart baboons have bright red patches of skin on their hairless chests to signal their fitness and readiness for mating. Cardinals’ red colour comes from pigments called carotenoids created as the bird metabolizes berries and seeds through the bloodstream into the feathers. The brighter the colour, the more suitable the mate. Similarly with male house finches.
Red says pay attention! In the Church we use two kinds of red. A light, brighter red, like the one we have, is typically used at Pentecost to point to the work of the Holy Spirit. It reminds us that the Spirit came as tongues of fire.
We are also supposed to have a deeper, darker, blood red. Which, if we had it, would be what we would use today and to mark the remembrance of martyrs and for Palm Sunday of the Passion. These Sundays invite us to pay attention to the reality of the challenges Jesus and people of faith have confronted and the consequences of these.
Jesus never said following him would be easy. The cross serves as a constant reminder that being Christian is counter cultural. It is a challenge that disturbs to the point where people notice and don’t always like it. This is why we need each other. We need a community that supports one another, that stands together against the challenges and trusts that our love is enough.
The red we wear and have around us today reminds us to pay attention in a special way to the cross and to each other as a family of faith about to welcome its newest members through baptism. In the crucifixion, Jesus becomes lifted before all of humanity, like the serpent that once saved the Jewish people bit by snakes in the desert. In Jesus we are called to look up, to pay attention, to open ourselves to hope and healing. In Jesus we are called into community, through Baptism, through Communion, through faith, so that we can stand together as we face the challenges of life.
May we be drawn to each other, Jesus, and God through the wonder of the colour red, and have faith that together and with God we are strong enough to face whatever life may give us. This we pray as we sing: 602 Lift High the Cross
