Dear Church Family,
Happy Easter! Christ is Risen!
In his Easter sermon, Ben referred to a poem by Wendell Berry that is a favorite of mine: Manifesto (the Mad Farmer Liberation Front). You can read it here: https://www.context.org/iclib/ic30/berry/
Though written in 1991 some of it seems eerily predictive, like the line “if they want you to buy something, they will call you.” The ads popping up on my phone testify that this prediction came true. The generals and politicos have, indeed, spent lots of time and money to figure out how to predict the movements of our minds, in what is now known as the “attention economy” online. Much of the world Berry describes came true: a world which too many of us sleepwalk through, not truly alive, auto-piloting our way through without hope in the future. But now Easter calls us to come out of our tombs of despair, to wake up to the goodness of life and life’s victory over death. This is not easy; it takes work. As we stand here at an uncertain turning point, where it seems from some evidence that the long hard yearlong Lent of the pandemic has finally ended — yet on the other hand, others report that we may be headed into a fourth surge — we have much in common with the women at the tomb two thousand years ago. They received the good news, but according to the gospel of Mark, they were so terrified by it that they took it home and “said nothing to nobody” because they were plainly afraid. The implications of the resurrection are life-changing; perhaps too life-changing to those of us who have gotten overly used to death and grief this year. Shifting our gears into the practice of resurrection can be slow and hard work right now, especially as it needs to be mixed with caution and care.
But Christ is risen and death is defeated. How can we live into this astounding reality? How can we practice resurrection? “Do something that won’t compute,” Berry’s mad farmer writes; “Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.” He prescribes a prodigal extravagance, throwing your passion and effort into work that can never be finished in your lifetime. I hear the Easter challenge today: live generously, as if none of your gifts could be wasted. Pour out the expensive oil, like Mary of Bethany did on Christ’s feet, not holding back either from pain or from those who would say it is “too much —” too much expense, too much affection, too much joy.
It is a painful place we inhabit right now: the mixing of joy and sorrow, hope and caution as we peek around yet another corner of the pandemic experience. It can be hard to trust the joy and hard to sit with the sorrow. We are like the women at the tomb: we hold great joy, deep grief, and fear all at the same time. This Easter season our challenge is to stretch into that joy, let it grow, and give it generously away like the farmer scattering seeds. Some scattered seeds may fall on the rocks and paths or thorns, but we do not count our harvest in next year’s crop, rather we count it in the topsoil of the next millennium.
Happy Easter, friends. Christ is risen! Whether you are about the work of gardening or farming or making art or any other kind of work, may you find a way to practice resurrection in this Easter season.
Every Blessing,