From the Pastor
Reflecting on the challenge of her Easter faith, Anne Lamott writes: I don’t have the right personality for Good Friday, for the crucifixion…I’d like to skip ahead to the resurrection vision of one of the kids in our Sunday School who drew a picture of the Easter Bunny outside an open tomb: everlasting life and a basket full of chocolates!” She continues, “I hate it that you can’t prove the beliefs of my faith…Darkness is our context. Easter’s context: without the darkness you couldn’t see the light. Hope is about choosing to believe this one thing – that love is bigger than any grim, bleak {stuff} anyone can throw at us."
Her words remind me of Wendell Berry’s poem, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.” In that poem, the mad farmer warns against the love of “the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay,” a life that makes one “afraid to know your neighbors and to die.” Instead, the mad farmer exhorts us, “Every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world.” And, finally, “Practice resurrection.”
Easter certainly came early this year. My brain is still a bit scrambled from rushing around, trying to prepare so much so fast. Yes, Easter was early, but think of all the time we now have to “practice resurrection,” to dare to hope and to love in the face of any grim, bleak darkness. (Lamott tends to use more colorful language!)
I find it interesting that one of the first recorded comments about the people of the earliest church was not about their theology or teaching, it was not about words at all. Rather it was this: “see how they love each other.” They didn’t tell the truth of their faith; they lived it. And the world noticed. Do we believe in a God who can make a way when there is no way? Is there a truth that is bigger and more lasting than the often harsh reality we experience and read about in the daily newspaper? Is there a life – a love – stronger than death? On Easter Sunday our answer to all these questions was yes. But now it is April. Now it is time to live out that yes in a way that defies any explanation other than the presence of the very spirit of the living Christ within us. Yes, now it is time to “practice resurrection.”
Gene
