by the Very Rev. Jered Weber-Johnson
Standing in the arroyo, red rock stretching up and out in every direction, I watched in dismay as the first snowflake settled on my hand. It was spring in the desert. We had fled here, like Minnesotans have over the generations, to escape winter. But, winter found us anyway.
That first flake multiplied and a flurry turned into a shower and in minutes the horizon was lost in whiteout. We hurried down the trail and to the warmth of our rental. I remembered that mournful and quintessentially Minnesotan ballad, by the Purple One himself, “Sometimes It Snows In April”. The next morning found our little corner of Arizona blanketed in snow, the desert plants covered in cottony puffs of white, the rock formations and buttes like sloppily decorated cakes, dollops of snow dripping from spires and canyon rims.
By late morning, the desert had done its work. The dry Arizona air had melted the snow, and every drop of moisture absorbed by the sandy soil. Standing on the same trail that had, only hours earlier, been a winter wonderland, I marveled at the desert’s ability to drink up water. I could see why the church often turns to the desert landscape as a metaphor for the season of Lent with its thirst for renewal, a land of scant relief and a place where bodies and minds can be tested and tried.
This Lent may have felt to you like a particularly intense season of testing. Even if your spiritual practice this season was easy or light, the world around us has felt at moments a bit less forgiving, a bit more dangerous, full of trials and hardships. Perhaps you come to this Holy Week with the words of the psalmist echoed from the cross by Jesus himself, “My God. My God. Why have you forsaken me?” resonating in your own heart and mind. When we see the innocent snatched off the streets, families torn apart, the wars, the bombs, the guns, the violence, the use of words to target the vulnerable, it might be easy to ask where is the life and hope in the midst of a seemingly Godforsaken season of the world. Our hearts break, and our hope might dwindle.
On the third morning after the snowstorm, we were hiking the exact same trail. We crested a rise, and the clouds broke, and the sun shone through. Up ahead, the branches of a desert plant, like all the ones we’d passed on every previous day, seemingly dead, branches bare and spiny, had suddenly pushed forth a sprouting of green. What’s more, at the point of each shrub there were blossoms about to burst. I looked out further, and there were plants of so many varieties, blooming in colors yellow and purple and green. I was reminded of the words of the prophet Isaiah, most often heard in worship in another season of wilderness, in Advent, who says “The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad… and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing”!
There is an Easter hope, this and every season, when the world seems dead and barren—and it blooms forth not only in spring, but in every moment. It is a hope embodied in the Crucified One, who offered his life in vulnerability and humility, who was raised by the power of God’s infinite love, and inspires us to live accordingly in vulnerability, humility, and hope. The power of death and sin cannot constrain or contain this hope. Like the blooms in the desert, it comes to us again and again, reminding us that our lives are connected to the love that moves the earth and the seas, that changes seasons and even our hearts, and makes us able to love extravagantly and powerfully in this and every day of our lives.
As we enter Holy Week, I send you blessings and a prayer that you too, by walking with Jesus in each of the days of this most holy time, by attending with grace to the power of God made manifest in Jesus through his death and resurrection, will encounter and know in your innermost self, an Easter hope. I look forward to seeing you here for the worship of Holy Week.
If you too, in gratitude for the gift of Easter hope, wish to give towards the flowers of the church, which will stand as an outward and visible sign of the resurrection and new life made available to all in this season, please click here to give online by the end of the day (Tuesday, April 15).
Easter blessings to all you and yours!
Faithfully,
Jered+
