Presbyterian church embraces Protestant 'Flowering of the Cross' tradition for Easter

Easter in the Christian Church is a celebration of life over death. The stark imagery of the Lenten season and Holy Week gives way to the bright splendor of spring colors and renewal in the story of Christ’s death and resurrection.

At First Presbyterian Church in Murrysville, congregants will celebrate Easter on April 21 with a tradition that is not the norm among Presbyterian churches: they will hold a “Flowering of the Cross,” where parishioners will take turns adorning the stark 8-foot wooden cross with flowers from top to bottom.

“During one of the hymns, congregants will come forward, pick up a flower and insert it into the chicken-wire-type cage that is on top of the cross,” said Ed Klein, worship committee chair and an elder at First Presbyterian. “It’s taking the cross, a symbol of pain and death, and transforming it into something living and beautiful that represents life.”

The flowering, sometimes also called the “greening of the cross,” is a folk tradition which may date back thousands of years.

“There is (a) legend that says at Christ’s death the cross burst into blooming flowers,” Pastor Mike Marsh of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in West Texas wrote on his “Interrupting the Silence” blog. “Artwork from the sixth century shows a flowering cross.”

It it not necessarily widespread, however, even in the Protestant churches where it originated. Officials from Emmanuel Lutheran Church and Christ’s Lutheran Church in Murrysville do not observe the tradition, and Christ’s Lutheren Pastor Wayne Gillespie said he had not even heard of it before.

At First Presbyterian, the idea was proposed two years ago by Pastor Ed Gray.

“It was presented to the worship committee, and they were quite fascinated by it, so we agreed to move forward with it,” Klein said. “It’s just a manifestation of the celebration of Easter, the triumph of resurrection and the power of life over death.”