Bloom: Finding Resurrection in All Things
We exist in a strange collision of death and life.
This essay is based on an Easter homily I gave on April 17, 2022 at St. John’s Presbyterian Church in San Francisco, CA.
I recently received a text from a friend of mine who recently moved out to Washington, D.C. He’s a native Californian, so this was a completely new world for him.
His text said: “I have to concede that spring can’t really be described to a Californian. It is just so fucking pretty! So nice, especially after months and months of winter.”
He sent this during cherry blossom season in DC, so you can imagine just how beautiful it really was.
Coming from the Midwest myself, I have to say that I totally agree. After those months of face-numbing, hand-blistering, winter cold, there is nothing like watching the world come back to life and suddenly explode with color.
After over 18 years of living in California, I still miss it because you just don’t get that here.
Something’s always green. Something’s always in bloom.
It’s no secret or surprise that Easter — the mysterious day of resurrection — found its way into the celebration of springtime.
Spring is this strange collision of death and life.
In the Christian tradition, Easter is a day when we are invited to feel the absolute sharpness of that contrast. We’re right on that line.
Here’s a quick recap of the first moments of Easter morning (as written in the Gospel of Luke): Three women make their way to the tomb of Jesus. We can only imagine how deeply they are grieving this man, this leader, this Divine Love that has been violently taken from them. It’s been just a few days since his brutal death, but they still muster up the strength to continue their mourning by attending to his graveside.
And then confusion strikes not once, but twice.
First, the stone is rolled away, and the body of Jesus is nowhere to be found. A tremendous, devastating shock to be sure.
And second, men in bright, gleaming clothes suddenly appear. The original Greek text says they dazzle like lightning, and we’re meant to feel the flash of fear that they brings these women to the ground.
The men ask: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”
“Jesus isn’t here! He’s alive!” they say. “He told you he would be! Why would you look here where the dead things are? There’s no life here.”
The thing is… That’s not quite how the world works, is it? We don’t have dead spaces. Or alive spaces.
Like springtime, our world is this strange collision of death and life.
Both of these things happen together — all over the place.
A few weeks ago, I was out with our church gardening group in Golden Gate Park. We were weeding and cleaning out the Fern Dell, this prehistoric-looking area that feels almost like Jurassic Park.
Our morning began with pulling up weeds, old vines, and dead roots. Once we started digging a little deeper, the lead gardener shouted out to everyone, “Take a look at this! It’s so cool!” We all dropped our shovels, and scurried over to see all of these little bugs called springtails that were bouncing up, down, and sideways.
Hidden underneath all of the dead stuff were these little creatures—and they were the ones doing the hard work of breaking down the little dead bits of creation so something new could sprout up.
That’s true inside of us, too. Our bodies are made up of these magical cells that work behind-the-scenes—with no help from us—to restore, repair, and reenergize us. Even as you read this, they are taking the dead things of this world and turning them somehow into life.
We life in a strange collision of death and life.
That’s precisely what Easter reveals.
Rachel Held Evans was a brilliant writer and thinker who left the evangelical church and began to explore her faith and her relationship with God in new ways.
She writes this:
“The truth is, the church doesn’t offer a cure. It doesn’t offer a quick fix. The church offers death and resurrection. The church offers the messy, inconvenient, gut-wrenching, never-ending work of healing and reconciliation. The church offers grace. Anything else we try to peddle is snake oil. It’s not the real thing.”
Our world faces so much today. You know it. You see it. We face challenges, brokenness, and division at a level of magnitude that we have never encountered before. And with that has come a lot of pain and a lot of death.
It is completely reasonable to want that quick fix. What a good thing to want. Nothing would be better than for someone or something to swoop in, save the day, and make it all better.
But the Christian faith reveals that our salvation—the thing that saves us—comes to us looking more like those jumping little bugs in the soil of Golden Gate Park working amidst the death to grow new life.
Easter shows us exactly what God is doing with this world.
All things will be made new.
All things will be made just.
All things will be made right.
We see God’s unstoppable promise in action: that there will be a resurrection of all things — all people, all systems, all nations, all the world, and beyond.
In the life and ministry of Jesus, we get a glimpse of that. He comes to show us that it’s real and it’s possible. He builds a community that carries one another’s burdens, breaks down social barriers, heals people, feeds them, shows them they belong when no one else will, and loves them to the fullest.
He shows us Heaven on Earth: God’s New Creation. He brings that far off reality to us so we don’t just have to imagine it anymore.
In his death and the events leading to it, we see what it takes to bring God’s New Creation to life. It requires us to give up parts of ourselves. It requires whole new ways of life that threaten the powerful. We discover that the work of love and justice is hard, oftentimes painful, and risky — but so, so worth it.
But then comes Easter morning. The resurrection. That unbelievable day when we see that nothing we can do — not even death itself — will ever stop the God’s work of renewal from happening in all of Creation. Nothing can stop the Love of God.
That is the truth in which we find our hope.
That is our good news.
And it is good news that we can see every single day.
Those lightning-robed men asked the women at Jesus’ tomb: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”
Well, I’m going to talk back to them a little bit and say: “Why? Because there is resurrection happening everywhere, all the time.”
Amongst the dead things of this Earth, new life is always sprouting.
In big ways. In small ways. In invisible ways.
The relationship reconciled after years of estrangement: resurrection.
The courage to end a relationship out of self-care and survival: resurrection.
The strength to live in the heaviness of depression or anxiety: resurrection.
The gay man who starts over after his community rejects him: resurrection.
The queer child who finds a trusted teacher to tell their secret: resurrection.
The trans person on a journey towards their authentic self: resurrection.
The unhoused man hearing the click of his own door that locks: resurrection.
The lonely person greeted by someone who knows their name: resurrection.
The refugee who packs up, travels far, and arrives at freedom: resurrection.
This is the resurrection promise of God, unfolding moment-by-moment all around us.
Where have you seen it?
Or heard it?
Or known it for yourself?
Because like a California springtime, something is always blooming.
Here. There. And even in you.
On April 10, 2022, the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus premiered a new song called “Bloom” with music by Broadway composer Stephen Schwartz (Wicked, Pippin, The Prince of Egypt, Enchanted) and lyrics by Alex Elle based on her poem, “Resilience.”
Here are her words:
Bloom.
Bloom
and then wilt,
only to bloom again.
If we can learn anything from flowers,
It is that resilience is born,
Even when we feel like we are dying.
Look at you
still standing,
after being
knocked down
and thrown out.
Look at you,
still growing
after being
picked and plucked
and prodded out of
your home.
Look at you,
still dancing
and singing
after being
defeated and
disassembled.
Look at you, love
still here and hopeful,
hopeful after it all…
You bloom.
In the spirit of Easter morning, may you embark upon an endless scavenger hunt as you look into this world — this strange collision of death and life — and find resurrection.
Look for things that bloom.
In creation.
In your neighbor.
In yourself.
Fix your eyes on that. Find peace in that. That is where hope lies.
That is how we know that we are a part of our Resurrecting God’s unbreakable promise to make all things new.
