Good Friday: Gardening in the Snow

It is April 6, Good Friday 2012, and it is snowing outside. I am watering the small pepper and tomato plants that have just managed to peek their newborn heads up out of the soil. It seems incongruous—somehow not right—to nurture new life on the day we commemorate the sacrifice and death of the Savior. And it is really snowing outside. It is just plain counterintuitive to put effort into raising up new life on a day of loss—such suffering, pain and death. It is also counterintuitive to plant and water in a snowstorm.


I know, of course, that life follows a cycle of seasons. There are seasons of building up a new idea and out of a growing sense of visions and conviction; seasons for watching as all the potential moves toward great fruitfulness—and doing the weeding and pruning necessary for even greater fruitfulness; seasons for harvesting and celebrating the plenty; and seasons for watching the old plants wither and fade away. I hate the season of death. Maybe someday I will be better at embracing it; I hope so. Death really is a necessary part of life.


Jesus knew this. Only days before his death Jesus said told his disciples, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. 25 Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me” (John 12:23-26).


This was radical teaching, and different from the religious paths of the day. The Pharisees insisted on right doctrine and personal holiness. The Sadducees insisted on right religious rituals. The Zealots insisted on right activism. Jesus’ path was different.


Jesus insisted on right relationships. Jesus was the Son of the One he called Father. Sent by the Father, he joined with the weak, the downtrodden and the needy. That is where Jesus always is, and that is where his followers also end up—on the side of the poor and the weak. For the established and empowered local leaders, both the religious and the political leaders, this was too much. Jesus’ words and actions were a standing criticism of all that they were about. This is why Jesus had to die.


Jesus’ true followers do not always have the right doctrine. Jesus’ true followers do not always look as religious as they should. It is not about getting all these things “just right.” Jesus true followers recognize a truly authentic move of God and of human faith in Jesus. In his life and in his death, Jesus embodied God’s intention (good news proclaimed, and good news put into action) and the authentically faithful human response to God’s intention. Jesus’ followers, today and every day, are a part of Jesus’ work to get people to live relationally in the world out of a deep awareness of God’s intentional relationship with us.


Like the disciples, though, I still have a hard time accepting that death is a necessary part of life.

I watch as so much potential now withers in the world. Our world needs people who care more about relationships than about winning. Our world needs more of what the Bible calls “true religion” which the Bible insists means standing with the widow, the orphan and the outcast (from James 1:27, which I include with other species of life on earth). We have so much potential for all that right now. But it seems that we are hell-bent on killing our current religious, political and economic structures first. And unfortunately, this also includes killing so much life, non-human and human, as a result of our mad rush to the bottom.


And so I am planting seeds in the snow season, and I am watering infant plants even as it snows outside, bleakly trusting that a new season is coming. I am doing this as a religious leader. I am doing this as a family man. I am doing this as a citizen in my society. I am doing this as one creature living among many, on a mountain, in one part of the northern end of planet earth. In all these arenas of my life I am bearing witness to too much death.


It is Good Friday. I am watering seeds and seedlings, and the snow is falling.

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