“Almost Biblical.” That is how one staff member at the church described this week. Between the flood in our own Buchan building and the fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, that description had me nodding my head in agreement.
In this week when the tulips have finally opened at my house, when we look forward to Easter Sunday and singing “Hallelujah,” one temptation is to focus only on the miracle of rebirth around us and within us in this season. But religious life calls us also to hold disappointment and even the disasters of life. Religious life is a call to be present to the truth of life, all of life, not just the glories of the spring.
It is during the hard times, that we need faith to keep on keeping on. It is during those hard times when faith is most often tested and questioned. I can’t recall ever hearing someone question their faith because they were experiencing too much joy.
The wisdom of the Christian liturgical calendar is that we don’t get to Easter and the resurrection without first knowing Good Friday. I know that these metaphors do not hold power for many of us. But more of us will gather in the sanctuary this Sunday than on any other Sunday in the year.
The yearning for rebirth is real in our hearts.
But we cannot deny the truth of disasters or the reality of loss.
The test of faith, as Wendell Berry wrote, is to “Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.”
The test of faith is to get to the full-throated hallelujah’s of Easter Sunday not by pretending that the Good Fridays of our lives don’t exist but because those Good Fridays are all too real.
We are drawn to the promise of rebirth in this season. The yearning for new hope in our hearts is real.
We know that those who want only ease from life are destined to be disappointed.
But we also believe, we also have faith that deep joy is possible as well.
I am preaching as much to myself as I am to any of you, of course. I often say that liberal religion is not for the faint of heart. No faith that accepts the truth of the world is an easy faith. Many of us, most probably, have known wilderness times in our lives.
But like tulips rising out of the earth each spring, just as they persist in rising, so too can we.
The water damage to the Buchan Building will be repaired. It will most probably take the balance of this church year. It will be inconvenient to say the least. But the damage will be repaired.
Notre Dame will be rebuilt.
We will live through the Good Fridays of our lives and into the hope of Easter.
We will rise!
Hallelujah!
Bill