Planting Seeds of Hope under Dark Skies of Uncertainty

My childhood pastor, Glen Wiberg, who died a few years ago, left the most wonderful image and story of the essayist E.B. White behind. It blesses me in every resurrection season, as I see the perennials suddenly, breathtakingly appear again. Though you’ve likely heard it, I must share it again. Wiberg writes:

E.B. White writes of watching his wife Katherine planning the planting of the bulbs in her garden in the last autumn of her life. He wrote: “There was something comical yet touching in her bedraggled appearance…the small hunched-over figure, her studied absorption in the implausible notion that there would be yet another spring, oblivious to the ending of her own days which she knew perfectly well was near at hand, sitting there with her detailed chart under those dark skies in dying October, calmly plotting the resurrection.“

Wiberg reflects, “What a provocative phrase: ‘plotting the resurrection“! Katherine was a member of the resurrection conspiracy, the company of those who plant seeds of hope, seeds of tomorrow under dark skies of uncertainty and impending death; people going about their living and dying until, no one knows how, when, or where, the tender shoots of life appear, and a small piece of creation is healed. That’s who we are as God’s Easter people — those oblivious to the ending of our own days, calmly plotting the resurrection.”

The pithy saying rings true: we don’t know what the future holds but we know who holds the future. This new life Christ has planted in me will survive my death as it grows nearer each day. I can live with hope, even under dark skies because of this. I can plot the resurrection now even from this mortal veil. While I must experience “mortal ills prevailing”, I can defiantly keep planting seeds of life with faith in that one “whose kingdom is forever”.

As far as I know, my health is adequate. A recent annual physical and blood tests did not set off any major alarms. I am not attempting to morbidly communicate some infatuation with death. No, quite the opposite I hope — that though more of my human life is now behind rather than ahead, life is really just beginning! And God has made it so, once and for all in Jesus, the Holy One who came out of the death that wanted to have a lasting hold on him, and said to the world, “You also will live.”

Can you plot that resurrection life wherever you are just now?

Love From Here

Peter Hawkinson

Planting Seeds of Hope under Dark Skies of Uncertainty

My childhood pastor, Glen Wiberg, who died a few years ago, left the most wonderful image and story of the essayist E.B. White behind. It blesses me in every resurrection season, as I see the perennials suddenly, breathtakingly appear again. Though you’ve likely heard it, I must share it again. Wiberg writes:

E.B. White writes of watching his wife Katherine planning the planting of the bulbs in her garden in the last autumn of her life. He wrote: “There was something comical yet touching in her bedraggled appearance…the small hunched-over figure, her studied absorption in the implausible notion that there would be yet another spring, oblivious to the ending of her own days which she knew perfectly well was near at hand, sitting there with her detailed chart under those dark skies in dying October, calmly plotting the resurrection.“

Wiberg reflects, “What a provocative phrase: ‘plotting the resurrection“! Katherine was a member of the resurrection conspiracy, the company of those who plant seeds of hope, seeds of tomorrow under dark skies of uncertainty and impending death; people going about their living and dying until, no one knows how, when, or where, the tender shoots of life appear, and a small piece of creation is healed. That’s who we are as God’s Easter people — those oblivious to the ending of our own days, calmly plotting the resurrection.”

The pithy saying rings true: we don’t know what the future holds but we know who holds the future. This new life Christ has planted in me will survive my death as it grows nearer each day. I can live with hope, even under dark skies because of this. I can plot the resurrection now even from this mortal veil. While I must experience “mortal ills prevailing”, I can defiantly keep planting seeds of life with faith in that one “whose kingdom is forever”.

As far as I know, my health is adequate. A recent annual physical and blood tests did not set off any major alarms. I am not attempting to morbidly communicate some infatuation with death. No, quite the opposite I hope — that though more of my human life is now behind rather than ahead, life is really just beginning! And God has made it so, once and for all in Jesus, the Holy One who came out of the death that wanted to have a lasting hold on him, and said to the world, “You also will live.”

Can you plot that resurrection life wherever you are just now?

Love From Here

Peter Hawkinson

Resurrection, Really?

This week, on Easter Sunday morning, I woke up early – a little earlier than usual.

My parents were in town, and we had a full morning at church ahead, a big lunch to cook, family to call – lots going on. But I wanted time to move slowly, with intention instead of stress. I wanted to savor the delight of putting on a new Easter dress, and doing my hair, and picking out earrings. To take my dog Zoe on a walk, breathing in the perfectly warm April air, letting the sun shine on my face…I wanted to soak it all in.

It promised to be a beautiful day, the kind of Easter you always hope it will be, where you can open the windows wide, hunt eggs outside, take pictures without freezing your arms off. And after a long, hard Lenten season, I was ready for this.

I put Zoe’s leash and collar on her, grabbed a handful of treats, headed out the door and across the street. We started our walk in a little nearby park, often filled with residents from a medical facility. Many of them experience different levels of addiction, and the park can be full of trash and smoke – but the mornings are usually quite peaceful. One of the residents there waved hello, and wished me a happy Easter.

And then started talking about my body.

He assured me it wasn’t disrespectful, because there was no one else there, but I can promise you it was disrespectful in the extreme.

I pretended I couldn’t hear, ignored him, directed Zoe around the corner and went on with our walk and our day.

But later that afternoon, I went for another walk with my parents down by Northwestern’s campus, right on the lake. There were lots of others taking advantage of the late afternoon sunshine, walking their dogs, strolling, and running.

And then I saw a car full of young men pull up near the walkers path, and start yelling at one of those runners. A young woman.

Again, I’ll spare you the details, but it was gross and threatening and horrible to hear.

She pretended she couldn’t hear them, ignored them, and went on with her run and her day.

But I couldn’t shake it off this time. Not when I went to bed that Easter night, not when I woke up yesterday. And witnessed a dozen other petty and mean things: the dog poop someone left right in front of a neighbor’s garage. The road rage another driver hurled out of his window at my dad, for not going fast enough.

This, right on the heels of Easter?

All this nastiness, this brutality, this denigrating of other people, right when we’re supposed to be singing “Christ, the Lord, is risen today” and collecting our Easter lilies and greeting each other with “he is risen”?

This year, sin and death were doing their utmost to tell me they weren’t finished. They weren’t nearly finished. They might not even have been defeated. Not by the way things looked.

And I’ll be honest with you. I almost believed them. I almost fell for it.

Because if I were to go just by appearances, then they were right. Resurrection seemed just like a nice idea. A vague hope. But not a real and legitimate and life-altering thing.

Certainly, nothing seemed any different on Easter Sunday or even Monday, from the way it had been a few hours before. We might be proclaiming an empty tomb and a risen Christ, but the world around me still seemed to be stuck on Friday.

I was reminded, though, that this is probably how things also looked to Jesus’ disciples on that first Easter Sunday.

The artist Scott Erickson, in describing a show of his based on the resurrection, writes this:

“According to the scriptures, nothing seems to change in the world on the day that Jesus rose from grave. Rome didn’t stop being in power. The religious leaders who asked for a crucifixion didn’t lose their jobs. It took a while before the followers of Jesus stopped hiding for their lives in a room together. It was all very small at first. So small that you’d think it wasn’t any kind of event at all.” (See here for his full reflection.)

Scott goes on to comment that Jesus’ resurrection changed him, and thus his followers, and thus their own communities, and thus ultimately the world. But it was slow. It took time. For many people, things looked the same for a while.

I find that, in a strange way, encouraging. That resurrection isn’t any less real because I can’t see it some days. Because I still feel the power of death at work in me and all around me. Resurrection doesn’t promise me that death isn’t real, but it does promise me that it’s not final.

It doesn’t get the last word.

And what does get the last word?

Life. And love.

So if you, too (like me) need the reminder early and often during this Easter week, here it is: resurrection, really.

Life, really. Love, really.

In the end, this is what wins. May I, may you, may all of us live like we really believe it. Amen.

-Pastor Jen