1.
Now, looking throughthe slanting lightof the morningwindow towardthe mountainpresenceof everythingthat can be,what urgencycalls to yourone love? What shapewaits in the seedof you to growand spreadits branchesagainst a future sky?
(David Whyte)
“How could you expect to find him here?” “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” That’s where it all begins. A handful of women devastated by grief, emptied of hope, face to face with angels. “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” Instinctively, they probably ask, “Why not?” After all, they were there on Friday, they were watching as the Romans nailed him to a tree. Some part of them, some huge part of them, died too that day. And that’s what brings them to the teacher’s tomb, after all, early in the morning, with spices and ointments. Death wins again.
And now this. Men in dazzling clothes. Rumors of resurrection. You really can’t blame these women for some skepticism, some cynicism. They’ve awakened to same cock’s crow; they’ve wandered through the same ghettos and streets to find this tomb. Nothing seems terribly new. Another day in occupied Palestine. You really can’t blame them for wanting some sign, some kind of proof. What good are these rumors, these rumors of resurrection?
But this good news, this bewildering good news, has nothing to do with certainty, dogma, vindication. Resurrection comes their way and ours by way of a question. “What urgency calls you to your one love?” Do you hear that? Do you hear that question this morning, inside the dark, dank tomb? It isn’t a technical question. It isn’t a doctrinal question. “What urgency calls you to your one love? What shape waits in the seed of you to grow and spread its branches against a future sky?” Easter! And this wild wonder splits the hard shell of your despair and begs for your bewilderment. Resurrection comes your way by way of a question. A holy question. An angel’s question. “What urgency calls you to your one love?”
Now obviously, I’m spinning off David Whyte’s poem to get a new read on this Easter text. I’m spinning off David Whyte’s questions to catch these Easter questions, these audacious Easter questions, fresh and clean. And isn’t that the point? Isn’t that exactly what God has in mind for you and for me and for us? It has to be.
But you know the drill. You wake in the morning – and you assume that God’s got to be busy with a zillion other things. You’re cool with the idea of God; but you’re deeply skeptical about God’s being at all interested in your day, your choices. And then you lay your head down late at night – and darkness seems like emptiness. God seems like a long shot at best, or distant, maybe a little disinterested. Maybe you’ve given up, long since given up, on passion.
And then, for who knows how many reasons, you wander into the garden on Easter morning. And you follow some friends into the tomb, because the stone’s been rolled away. And what’s waiting for you, what’s been waiting all along, is this question, this unexpected, audacious question, that could only come from God: “What urgency calls you to your one love? What shape waits in the seed of you to grow and spread its branches against a future sky?” And in the blink of an eye, in the thumping of your heart, in the lump in your throat, you realize: God’s been with you. God’s been in you. God’s been for you all along. From the very beginning. Before the very beginning.
And moreover: “You are not a troubled guest on this earth,” more poetry, language, words. “You are not a troubled guest on this earth, you are not an accident amidst other accidents, you were invited from another and greater night than the one from which you have just emerged.” You see what I mean? Easter invites you home – where you belong. Easter names you – a child of God. There is no distance between you and God. There’s no ambivalence in God’s heart around your life and your worth and your future. You are not a troubled guest on this earth. You are not an accident amidst other accidents. In your eyes burns a fire unlike any fire the world has ever known. In your heart lives a dream that you alone can realize. You are not an accident. You are a child of God.
2.
I want to tell you about a remarkable memorial service I attended a couple weeks ago, down in Aptos, a memorial service for Stu Fitch. He was a man I knew just a little but respected very much. He was an Episcopal priest and a gentle giant. He’d visited us here at FCC several times, last on Valentine’s Day, and I remember feeling, in his presence, a kind of serenity and peace. He was happy in his own skin, Stu Fitch, and grateful for his life. And his gratitude was infectious. As gratitude always is.
His sister described in detail the last hours of Stu’s life. His large, extended family crowded into his room at Dominican Hospital. They did all the things Stu had taught them to do through the years: they sang hymns, they said prayers, they caressed and comforted him.
And Stu slipped slowly away, into the mystery, into the everlasting arms. Some hours later, he had an oxygen mask fixed over his face. His family stayed close, rubbing his arms gently, singing some songs. Late that night, Stu sat up in his bed. And through his mask, he said to his family, “Would you please, if you please, let me go? I want to go inside. I really need to concentrate.” Imagine that. “I really need to concentrate.” He’d appreciated, even delighted in hours of tender affection and generous attention. And now, Stu was ready for some solitude, for some time to himself. He wanted so much to concentrate on the journey at hand, the last moments of his life. He trusted that something strangely mystical was happening – to him, to his body, to his spirit. And he wanted to pay attention to that process; he wanted to participate in his own dying. “I really need to concentrate,” he told them.
Imagine that. Here’s an 86-year-old man, a priest, a child of God. And he’s dying. He’s letting go of all those projects, all those sermons, all those churches he’s served. He’s saying goodbye to the wife he loves, to his children, grandchildren. And his body is shutting down. He’s got a morphine drip, going slowly, an oxygen mask wrapped across his face, and now he wants to concentrate. He wants to pay attention. He wants to participate in the journey at hand. He believes.
And he was like that, I think, Stu Fitch was like that. He lived by dying. Not simply as a heroic task at the end of his life, but as a practice, a discipline throughout his 86 years. He lived by dying. He lived by letting go. He lived by surrendering, one day at a time, all the attachments that seduce the soul. Control. Anger. Resentment. Pride. Certainty.
Remember that strange teaching Jesus laid on the disciples on the way to Jerusalem: “Unless a grain of wheat falls,” he said, “and is buried in a field, it remains a single grain. But if it falls, if it dies and is buried in a field, it yields a rich and bountiful harvest.” It’s a wild little koan, this teaching, a verse you could spend a lifetime learning. “If it falls,” Jesus said, “if that grain of wheat dies and is buried in a field, it yields a rich and bountiful harvest.” How we die, how we let go, how we surrender is critically important: it’s spiritually, theologically, critically important.
And you know, I looked around St. John’s that afternoon; and I saw the gratitude in people’s eyes, the joy Stu had left behind among family, friends, the churches he’d served. And just then, it was strangely clear to me what Jesus was getting at in his little verse about the grain that dies in the field. Stu Fitch had been dying, surrendering his whole life long. He’d made a spiritual practice of dying. Surrendering in prayer – all those days, all those moments, all those years – this decent man, this child of God yielded to the deepest grace imaginable, the pregnant mystery. And my God, what a harvest! I looked around the church that afternoon, all those eyes, all those tears, all that gratitude! My God, what a harvest!
3.
So what urgency calls you to your one love?
You know, urgency doesn’t have to mean frenzy, anxiety, velocity. Urgency – in David Whyte’s poem – has much more to do with some kind of divine desire. God needs you and your love. Just as God needed Stu Fitch. Just as God needed Jesus of Nazareth. Just as God needs the visitor in the seat behind you and the dear friend in the seat in front. Some shape waits in the seed of you to grow and spread its branches against a future sky. Urgency has something to do with God’s excitement around that. Your unique shape. Your unique service. Your unique blessing. God needs you. God waits for you. You are like no other.
But trust me, friends, this resurrection business is not for the faint of heart. Easter’s gonna test us. And resurrection takes some courage.
I came across a stunning story recently from South Africa. You’ll remember that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established after the abolition of apartheid to bring all that violence to light and to give both victims and perpetrators a chance to be heard. Well, at one point, the Commission brought an elderly black woman face to face with a white man, a Mr. Van de Broek, the same man who had tortured and murdered her son and husband, a few years earlier. The old woman had been forced to watch her husband die. And amazingly, the last three words he spoke, words she remembered well, were “Father, forgive them.” Just like that. “Father, forgive them.”
Well, a member of the Commission turned to her that day and asked, “How do you believe justice should be done to this man who’s inflicted such suffering on you?” And this is the urgency part. The shape waiting in the seed part. The old woman replied that day, “I want three things. I want first to be taken to the place where my husband’s body was burned so that I can gather up the dust and give his remains a decent burial.” Then she stopped, and collected herself, and then she continued. “My husband and son were my only family. I want, secondly, then, for Mr. Van de Broek to become my son. I would like for him to come twice a month to the ghetto and spend a day with me – so that I can pour out to him whatever love I have still remaining with me. And finally, I want a third thing.” And again she paused, and collected herself. “I would like Mr. Van de Broek to know that I offer him my forgiveness because Jesus Christ died to forgive. This was also the wish of my husband. And so,” she said, “I would kindly ask someone to come to my side and lead me across the courtroom so that I can take Mr. Van de Broek in my arms, and let him know that he is truly forgiven.”
Can you imagine? Where does an old woman come across that kind of courage, that kind of compassion? Jesus, right? Years and years of reading the stories. Years and years of praying to Jesus. Years and years of taking him seriously. And the shape that waits in the seed of her is grace.
So a couple of assistants came to help her across the room. And Mr. Van de Broek, who was just plain overwhelmed by what he’d heard, fainted on the spot. And, as he did, all those in the courtroom – friends, family, neighbors, all victims of decades of oppression – started in singing “Amazing Grace.”
Now if that’s not an Easter story…
Imagine that man – justifiably prepared for all kinds of fury – imagine Mr. Van de Broek watching this old black woman choose compassion and forgiveness instead. Imagine him watching her shuffle across the floor, determined that he join her family. What right did he have to expect any of this? And is he up to it? Is this resurrection business just too much for him? I hear David Whyte’s poem again, unexpected words of grace and light and new beginnings: “You are not a troubled guest on this earth,” he says, “you are not an accident amidst other accidents, you were invited from another and greater night than the one from which you have just emerged.” Sweet Jesus. No wonder the poor guy topples over. No wonder he faints on the spot.
I want to propose this morning that this kind of compassion, this kind of imagination is not an irrational, singular, miraculous stunt – a good story for the preacher who needs an illustration on Easter Sunday. It has to be more than that. This old black woman – who’s lost everything and suffered everything and watched as hope was crushed before her – this old woman recognizes in that courtroom divine urgency itself. Jesus sitting there in the midst of all that pain. And, friends, if she can do it, if she recognize in herself the shape of compassion and love and forgiveness and grace. If she can do that, we can do it too.
4.
I think the most revolutionary thing you can do this Easter Sunday is to go slow. It’s not to rush out after church and check your voice-mail. It’s not to rush out after church and buy an i-Pad. It’s not to rush out after church and do anything. I think the most revolutionary thing you can do today is to go slow and pay close attention.
Pay close attention to the breath that rises in you like the Spirit of God. Pay close attention to the way you turn that breath into sound, the way you speak and encourage, the way you sing and praise, the way you pray. Go slow.
Pay close attention to the suffering in your life, to your own stubborn pain. Be patient with yourself. Be patient with the child of God in your heart. Be patient enough to hear what your soul is saying. Go slow.
And by all means, pay close attention to the brokenness of the world. Take this broken bread in your fingers, the broken body of Christ, and touch these wounds. See that these wounds are also your wounds. Pay close attention and be tender, be generous, be brave. Go slow.
Do the revolutionary thing. Pay close attention. To the slanting light. To the uninhibited children. To the forgiving old woman. To the One, Holy, Risen God. Remember that your life and my life and our lives are held and cradled and set free inside one huge love. And remember that every grain of wheat that dies, every grain of wheat that is buried, every grain of wheat that is surrendered to the field, yields a rich and bountiful harvest.
What shape waits in the seed of you to grow and spread its branches against a future sky? It’s Easter. What don’t we find out?
