For the Days Before Easter
This week, I received a Resurrection Gift a few days early. In the corner of our garden, under the cast-off pink petals of the tulip magnolia, I saw a glimpse of rhubarb.
I wrote about the circumstances of how we inherited this tiny patch in an earlier post. Some of you will remember how we were present at the razing of my grandparent’s garden in November. Patrick and I were able to wrestle a few clumps of what we sincerely hoped was rhubarb out of the frozen ground before machines ground up the 50-year-old patch.
We brought the dirt and root clump home from Michigan, planted it in the corner of the garden and promptly forgot all about it. This week, we found three red stalks. They shook something loose in my spirit. It reminded me of my favorite poem for Resurrection season:
Resilience by Debra Rienstra
So first thing after they moved in,
the neighbors dug up Ruth’s old garden,
a front-yard oddity that had appeared –
shaggy, extravagant, sprawling – wherever
her springtime sweat cast its charms.
The new people pulled out
her spindly jungle of asparagus; tore up
the nasturtium border whose sensuous petals,
like mangoes, you could pluck and eat;
they hacked down six-foot sunflowers;
mowed over silky native grasses that flowed
on breezy days like a woman’s hair.
The little paw-paw tree they decided to keep.
They mowed around it.
Grinning and waving at us as we strolled by,
they spent a hot September weekend
digging and seeding, laying straw,
staking off squares of flat, potential decency.
The straw muddied, winds came,
snow fell then melted, the weather warmed,
and Ruth’s earth took its revenge:
A hundred tulips shot up
in the feeble spring lawn,
raising first their cocked leaves,
then their green, defiant heads.
If there’s any symbol I want to burn behind my eyes as I wait for God to set all things right, I want to remember the frost-bitten remnant of my grandmother’s pie patch.
If there are any weapons I want to wield against the oppressive cruelty and incessant atrocities of our world, it is missiles of blossoms refusing to stay underground.
In Isaiah 53:1-3, we read this:
53 Who has believed our message?
To whom has the Lord revealed his powerful arm?
2 My servant grew up in the Lord’s presence like a tender green shoot,
like a root in dry ground.
There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance,
nothing to attract us to him.
3 He was despised and rejected—
a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.
We turned our backs on him and looked the other way.
He was despised, and we did not care.
Jesus, dying in deep grief, terrible injustice, and painful rejection was like a bulb laid in poor soil. Thank God, that tender green shoot somehow remerged.
Isaiah goes on to write an even more evocative poem of hope in the next few verses:
“O storm-battered city,
troubled and desolate!
I will rebuild you with precious jewels
and make your foundations from lapis lazuli.
12 I will make your towers of sparkling rubies,
your gates of shining gems,
and your walls of precious stones.
13 I will teach all your children,
and they will enjoy great peace.
14 You will be secure under a government that is just and fair.
Your enemies will stay far away.
You will live in peace,
and terror will not come near.
From tulip tenderness, God promises towers of peace, security, and justice. The resurrection is a foretaste of rebuilding, proof that God’s shalom cannot be destroyed by bulldozer, billionaire, ballistic missile, or boardroom.
May we look for and witness about the ways we’ve seen defiant resilience, unexpected majesty, signposts of gem walls surrounding the troubled and desolate.
May we celebrate Jesus who gives us solidarity and sustenance, so that we may participate in the Resurrection even today.
