A Glad Surprise
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My heart sank as I watched Notre Dame de Paris burn and its spire fall. That great 850-year-old landmark which thousands of stoneworkers and glass blowers, metal workers and wood carvers crafted for over two centuries, that great site of so many musical, artistic and religious developments, had been burning already for hours. Crowds had lined the streets, singing hymns, pleading for the church to survive. But when the spire fell, I think many of us assumed the church was gone.
But then a new picture emerged, blurry around the edges, but clear enough to make out that it was of the inside of the nave, the large stone worship space inside the cathedral. It was obvious some damage had been done, but the nave was still standing, the altar somehow unscathed. Some called it a miracle. However the main body of Notre Dame managed to survive the inferno, it was certainly, to borrow Howard Thurman’s phrase, a glad surprise.
We can only imagine the glad surprise of the women in the Easter story. They rise very early and go expecting to prepare Jesus’ broken body for burial, to anoint it with good-smelling herbs and oil so that his friends and followers could gather around his body comfortably to offer their last goodbyes. They go expecting to encounter death, but instead they find an empty tomb, and a stranger with the unbelievable news that Jesus isn’t dead anymore. They don’t know what to believe. But then the story says that Jesus appears to each of them, urging them to travel far and wide, teaching the saving message of his ministry. He tells them that the true path of salvation lies not in military might and occupying force, but rather in work toward justice, mercy, compassion, and the understanding that every single person bears the image of Love.
With no dead body, no final resting place to visit, Jesus’ survivors are denied the possibility of dwelling on his death. They are beckoned into looking forward toward new hope, toward a future they believed impossible only moments before. And from there they carry his ministry forward. Jesus’ death was meant to be a humiliating deterrent. As black liberation theologian Dr. James Cone wrote, crucifixion was the lynching of the Roman Empire. Jesus’ execution was meant to shatter the threat to the Empire posed by the movement Jesus was building.
But Jesus was not defiled by his death; his ministry was not undone because the Roman government attempted to frame him as a criminal and a fake. As my colleague, the Rev. John Buehrens, explains, “… the resurrection was a vision—one deeply connected to a radical hope… that death, exile, and seemingly utter destruction can never put an end to Divine Love, to the Sacred story.” In other words, it was a vision of glad surprise.
What a blessing that we have this holiday set aside to remember again and again the glad surprises that buoy our lives and shape human history. What a blessing to have a day to honor the astonishing ways that renewal happens in the face of what seems like certain defeat. This is the day we celebrate that pain, hate, and death don’t have the final word, that something wonderful, something holy, can come out of even the worst experiences.
Many of the symbols of Easter testify to this idea. After a long winter when crops are just beginning to grow again and game is still scarce, it is the rabbits that first begin to appear in great numbers, probably because they will eat just about anything that grows. They are symbols of fertility and the abundance of spring. The egg, likewise, is a symbol of fertility and new life.
A friend recently told me about something I think is an even more powerful symbol of renewal—the Sahara resurrection plant. This plant can survive months and even years of dehydration, rolling through the desert wherever the wind blows it. It looks dead—way past dead, actually. But when it does finally roll into some water, the plant transforms from a brown, withered, tumbleweed-looking thing to a vibrant, green plant.
The Sahara resurrection plant seems an especially fitting Easter symbol. It’s kind of a hard sell to preach about resurrection in the same month as Earth Day, given what we know about how the planet is doing. Human activity has affected the planet in lasting ways, ways that could literally come to annihilate much of life on Earth as we know it.
This isn’t hyperbole, it’s science. A UN report on climate change from a year ago suggests that humanity has only 11 years to make big changes before the damage we’ve done is irreversible. This isn’t new information, it’s just much more urgent. Yet despite decades of scientists’ warnings, many governments around the world, including and most especially the US, are doing little or nothing to reduce carbon emissions, and even deny outright the mountain of evidence that climate change is caused by human beings.
Without government support, getting everyone from individuals choosing not to use single-use plastic to big business choosing to invest in renewables instead of fossil fuels seems next to impossible. The problem feels too big. It’s too wrapped up in economic and political systems. It is all too easy to feel hopeless or powerless about the planet and our future on it.
And yet, the earth has amazing powers of renewal. Like the Sahara resurrection plant, entire ecosystems revive when given the opportunity.
Now, I’m not suggesting that the harm we’ve done to the Earth can or will all be undone. Scores of species have gone extinct. Radiation from nuclear bombs permeates an entire layer of matter on the Earth’s surface. Even in the most optimistic scenarios, climate change will have significant impact on life on this planet.
In another telling of the Easter story, when Jesus appears to his followers after the resurrection, his hands, feet, and side still bear the wounds from his execution. The wounds and scars of the past will never be erased. But if Easter has anything to teach us, it is that life and love are more powerful even than death. Though the path towards a sustainable relationship with the Earth is unclear, we must not lose hope that life will find a way.
When we’ve gone in expecting the worst, only to have the opposite happen; when we’re convinced there is no hope, and suddenly it dawns, filling the empty tombs of our hearts not with the finality of death but the possibility of new life, that is the glad surprise.
That is the power of resurrection and renewal. That is Easter.
- A Glad Surprise - April 1, 2020
