Easter sweets! reads the subject line. “We wish you a very happy upcoming Easter!” says the email promotion. And here I am still trying to journey toward the cross.
Just as consumerism encroaches into Advent with the demand to buy things for Christmas, the past few years I’ve noticed a similar commercial creep in Lent. Even with a pandemic, there’s pressure to prepare for the perfect Easter family feast, with baskets full of candy and pastel decorations all around.
Many churches aren’t much better when we get to the end of Lent’s 40 days, turning Easter into an ethereal day of certitude, with triumphant hymns that turn away from still-raw wounds.
We can lose sight of how messy and gritty resurrection is. Death is its prerequisite. It causes shock and carries grief that doesn’t vanish in a moment. And it involves our bodies, made of the same sort of matter as the earth.
Singer-songwriter Jim Croegaert’s “Was It a Morning Like This?” imagines the grass singing and the earth rejoicing to touch Jesus’ feet again. Creation welcomes Jesus back into a body made of the raw materials that connect all of life.
One morning near Easter I was going through the warehouse district and industrial corridor a little south of my home in Chicago, surrounded by gray sky and concrete, trucks loading and unloading cargo, and cars commuting. Trudging over the bridge spanning an expressway and the Chicago River, I looked at the green sprouting from the thawing ground along the water, slushy snow still splattered everywhere. Were these plants singing? Were these streets rejoicing to feel Jesus again?
The earth teaches us that resurrection is messy and gritty. Just as winter does not give way to spring all at once, resurrection isn’t a shining moment of triumph. It comes like the first sprouts that poke through mud. Resurrection comes in places that are bereft of pastels and white lilies, if we are willing to look without turning away.
Gathered and Scattered book update
As part of my research on the Community of Christ, an innovative congregation in D.C. that started in 1965, I’m reading books that were influential to its early leaders. One is George W. Webber’s The Congregation in Mission. Though the book was published in 1964, it struck me at points how little has changed. Urban congregations struggle with many of the same problems, even as we testify that the city is also a place of beauty and connection. When I begin to feel despondent about the issues of, for example, corruption in local government, Webber preaches to me in a good way (gender-exclusive language aside):
To the church has been given a foretaste of the kingdom of God and a sure hope for this world. The missionary congregation is called to face, with utter realism, the mess of the world, the inhumanity of man, the seeming hopelessness of a divided world, and yet to live with confidence.
At the end of the book Webber writes that feeling discouraged is recognizing the limitation of our human efforts to solve the vexing problems not only of the world but of the church. Webber writes, “When failure comes and is accepted, then congregations may dare to rely upon God’s grace alone, and in the very moment of despair may be lifted up again and given the gifts that are needed for God’s mission.”
Reading and listening
As I continue to work on lectionary columns and a possible sermon series on the Book of Samuel, I finished a biography of the ancient king, David: The Divided Heart by David Wolpe, a rabbi in Los Angeles. One insight is that while several people in Samuel are said to love David, the author doesn’t confirm whether or not David loved them back.
It was fascinating not only as I think about the figure of David but as I delve into researching a group biography (which is how I conceive of the book I’m writing about the Community of Christ). I keep returning to this quote from Anthony Domestico in the progressive Catholic magazine Commonweal: “A biographer damn well better love his or her subject. It should be a complicated form of love, not unthinking, not idealizing. But it should be love nonetheless.” I agree and tend to think Rabbi Wolpe would, too.
“Lord, Thou Hast Searched Me and Dost Know”
Psalm 139:1–12 was one of the scripture readings at my ordination; it is a favorite passage of mine. I recently discovered this hymn based on those verses of scripture, and a gorgeous recording of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjXWGsFda8I
This is amazing, Celeste. Thank you so much.