The easter readings are loaded ecological imagery. A few motifs are especially fertile:
The day. This is the day that the Lord has made let us rejoice and be glad in it (Psalm 118:24). The ecological layers required to calculate the date of Easter are beautifully deep! First, we wait for earth’s renewal at springtime (beginning with Jerusalem, therefore also throughout the northern hemisphere). Then we watch for equinox – when the plane of the earth’s equator directly intersects the sun, so that night and day are held in balance throughout the entire earth. Then we watch for the next full moon – mystically holding in balance night and day – a moment that also marks the beginning of passover. Then we wait for Sunday – the first day of creation and the day of resurrection – which, according to the most ancient way of counting time for Jews and Christians, begins with sunset on Saturday evening. St. Augustine wrote that all of these layers of meaning are to be understood sacramentally, the entire cosmos participating in the meaning of Easter (Letter 55 to Januarius 1.2). How can preachers resurrect the sense that easter is – centrally – an event for the entire cosmos?
The tree. They put Jesus to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day (Acts 10:39b-40a). Here preachers may draw on the profound tradition of interpreting the cross as the tree of life, God welcoming the exiled world to return to Eden. See Gail Ramshaw’s chapter on “Tree” in her Treasures Old and New and James Cone’s contemporary classic, The Cross and the Lynching Tree: in the work of these scholars preachers are challenged to engage both the scars of radical evil and the flowering of revolutionary promise embodied in the symbol of the tree of the cross.
The land. The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness… Again you shall plant vineyards on the mountains of Samaria; the planters shall plant, and shall enjoy the fruit (Jer 31:2, 5). Passover – intimately connected to Easter – has roots in an early barley harvest and in a migration to spring pastures, with both events proclaiming the goodness of the earth both here (barley harvest) and there (migration to spring pastures). Preachers can embrace the joy of earth’s renewal near and far, through the power of God in natural springtime cycles and through environmental justice victories won.
The garden. Supposing him to be the gardener (John 20:15). The Gospel of John marks Christmas with the entire cosmos being born, describing Jesus as the Word through which the universe is created (John 1), and celebrates Easter in a garden in which Jesus is perceived – not necessarily mistakenly! – as a gardener (John 20), recalling Jesus’ earlier saying, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit (John 12:24). As the imagery appears in liberation movements across the planet, they tried to bury us, they forgot we were seeds (phrase likely adapted from a poem of Dinos Christianopoulos).
The earthquake. Suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it (Mat 28:2). The boldness of the resurrection earthquake and the sassiness of this angel is a wonderful counterpoint to the gentle seeds sprouting in John’s resurrection garden. What mountain needs to be moved, what interstate highway needs to be swallowed into the earth, what revolution needs to take place for God’s beloved earth to rise to flourishing life again? Preachers seeking inspiration to imagine an easter earthquake might search for before-and-after photos of the restoration of the Cheonggyecheon stream in Seoul, where a multilevel highway was broken apart in order to resurrect a buried river and create a park in the heart of the city.
Blessings on your preaching this Easter – may the green blades rise among your people as the Word is proclaimed!
Rev. Dr. Benjamin M. Stewart
Rev. Dr. Benjamin M. Stewart serves as Pastor to Emmanuel Lutheran Church, Two Harbors, Minnesota, and as Distinguished Affiliate Faculty at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. A recent migrant to Duluth, Minnesota, Ben is a member of the North American Academy of Liturgy and contributes to its Ecology and Liturgy Seminar. He is author of A Watered Garden: Christian Worship and Earth’s Ecology (2011). A former village pastor to Holden, he now serves on the Holden Village Board of Directors.