We're in the tomb.
"What nice weather we're having!" said no one in New York this year.
It's been a long winter. It's April 19th, Easter Eve, and buds still lie hidden beneath the earth or on the end of stems longing for a few warm days, afraid of yet another polar vortex or arctic shockwave or the detonation of a subzero freeze bomb. Or something. In any case, these plants and flowers and tree buds sure are struggling, straining to show their faces - to open their eyes on the branches where they hang.
And come to think of it, a late bloom, a bloom that comes right after Easter, isn't so bad, at least as metaphors go. It's not comfortable, of course (I've been waiting for spring since Punxsutawney Phil ruined things for us all a couple of months ago), but as a metaphor for Easter, it works.
It works because death is a part of life, like my good friend and mentor Stephen said at so many funerals during his time at St. Mary Catholic Church. But beyond human death, evolutionary biology shows us that the growth of new species is based on the death of prior ones. Without extinction, there is no new life. Without death, emergence is impossible. While things are dormant like the body of Christ in the tomb, we are reminded of the possibility of new life. In light of the resurrection, we are reminded that life grows out of death like flowers from the ground. And new life is open to new possibilities. The tomb will again be empty. Flowers will again bloom.
It works because of blood and iron, although not in the way that might come to mind at the crux of the cross and resurrection. Why is blood red? Because it's packed with iron. Why is it packed with iron? Because it nourishes us, as it has nourished living and non-living things from the beginning of time. Where does the iron come from? The very first seconds after the Big Bang. Our blood and bones and bodies are made of the same particles of matter that have existed since matter came to be. We are connected with the stars, the planets, the plants and trees. And we share in the life of the universe, as participants in the life of God - the power of the Holy Spirit - that enlivens and sustains all things.
It works because Christ, as a human born of a human, is made of that same stuff. Christ could, as some theologians have said, be a "new emergent," the first sign of humanity's next radical evolutionary leap. To me, that's stretching the data a little to far. But in any case, the death of Christ accords with the death of species, and the resurrection of Christ, with its sanctifying power of grace, shows us that life will indeed triumph over death. What's more, the whole universe - not just humanity but ALL THINGS - are taken up into the life of grace in the death and resurrection of Christ (look up 1 Cor. 15:20-28). Salvation extends to the corners of the earth, to the full diversity of life, known and unknown. "The earth" - and indeed the whole cosmos - "is charged with the grandeur of God," as Gerard Manley Hopkins so beautifully wrote (full poem below, in the comments).
But when we impose ourselves on creation in a way that ends life before it has the chance to run its natural course - through abortion, yes, but also capital punishment, deforestation, denial of healthcare and welfare benefits, the destruction of our earth, and so on - we make ourselves gods, forgetting the "little less than" of the Genesis narrative. We make "dominion" into "domination" and forget that we are indeed created parts of this beautiful, fascinating universe from which we have emerged. The love to which we are called extends to all things, and Holy Saturday calls us to hope for that love in all things, to recall God's presence with us in all things, and to make God present in all things as we await the fulfillment of the life that awaits us outside the tomb.
So yes, we're in the tomb. But in one more day, new life will bloom.
Here's the poem, which gets to the heart of so many of the themes I've been rambling about yesterday (see my Good Friday post) and today:
"God's Grandeur"
THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
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