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SEEDS
 I
am writing this in a cafe, with the sound of conversation
all around, some music in the background, the smell of food
in the air. It is the early part of the evening on Good Friday.
Outside the sweet springtime sun is reflecting for a few
more moments on the buildings across the street. There is
a light breeze playing in the tops of the palm trees. The
air is warm and, yes, also this: Christ is in the tomb, planted
like a seed in the ground.
The fact that he is dead and buried tonight doesn't come
as a surprise to me. You could say I've had some time to
prepare for it. Two thousand years of preparation. The sense
of shock and outrage is a bit blunted by time, I guess, although
not the solemnity nor the sadness. It seems that brutality
is more integral to life than any of us would like to believe.
So it's not a surprise or a shock to hear the story of the
cross or to imagine the blood or to watch in my mind's eye
as they roll the boulder in front of the cave, seal it up,
walk away. In fact, sitting here today with my cup of tea
and soup, it strikes me as a bit of a relief. I am breathing
easier now. The stillness is beginning to descend. The turmoil
subsides and the pain of the beating and the nails in each
hand is dropping away now. The people are going home, sad
and exhausted, but they are finally going home. For Jesus,
it must be a relief too. I can hear it in those beautiful
last words. "It is finished," he said. "It
is accomplished."
Now there is nothing to do but wait. Nothing else. What
sweet relief! You can't rush seeds once they're in the ground.
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I have a small lawn beside my house. Or, more accurately,
I have small square of ground which is half covered in grass.
The other half is, or was until a couple days ago, bare dirt
and weeds.
When I moved in a year ago, the square was completely covered
with grass. The summer came in due course, hot like heavy
wool, and I discovered too late that the species of grass
planted in my lawn was not entirely resistant to drought.
In fact, the whole thing came on me rather suddenly. One
day the grass was green and lush. After that, a few hot days
followed by the appearance of brown spots in the grass. A
few more hot days, or maybe (yes, I confess) a few weeks,
and the brown spots started to converge. Before I knew what
was happening, half the lawn was dead and gone.
This sad state of affairs continued for several months --
one half dense and green, the other empty and arid. (I am
thinking to myself how life speaks so loudly sometimes and
in such strange metaphors. We, on the other hand, rarely
seem to catch on.) The winter rains came and doused the place.
Once, a few months ago, I spent a half hour on a Saturday
scratching around in the soil, trying to stimulate a growth
spurt among the old, buried roots. They stayed where they
were, dead, not dormant. (Vanity is such a ridiculous thing.
Next time I'll know better.)
Two weeks ago I woke up to find something different in the
air, some warmth maybe, or a faint scent. It was a great
improvement over the week before that which had been all
bad, all dark, infused with the hanging stench of winter's
corpse lying unburied in the yard. But it was becoming something
different now. Something was stirring; winter's passing was
becoming the ferment and fire for the oncoming spring. Slowly,
it dawned on me that then, right then, was the time
for planting seeds.
I bought some grass seeds, tall fescue from Oregon, which
sounds irrepressibly healthy and pure when you say it out
loud, and I spent the morning scraping away at the dead soil.
The scent of the earth and the work made my nose tingle and
my forehead damp. Then some fertilizer. Scatter the seed.
Scratch lightly across the surface to loosen things up and
bury the seed. Water abundantly. Walk away. Go do something
else for awhile if you can stand it. For quite awhile, it
turns out.
This waiting was the hard part of the following week. I
would wake up and sprint (okay, stumble sleepily) out to
the yard, surveying the ground for sprouts. Day after day
nothing. They just lay there looking suspiciously moribund,
which means dead, suspiciously exactly like the day I tossed
them there, as if nothing at all was happening.
This story is not about grass seed or gardening. Did I make
that clear?
Like I said before, you can't rush seeds.
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I wonder what the disciples did on that night after they
planted Jesus in the ground. Obviously it wasn't a typical
Friday-night-prayer-meeting kind of night. As far as I can
tell, the day had dropped into their laps like a rock from
the sky, entirely outside the range of the conceivable. Imagine
how hard-pressed they were to digest the week they had just
been through, from palm fronds and cheering crowds to blood
and water and a crown of thorns. He had said some strange
things before, but I have the feeling they hadn't really
expected this, hadn't really believed he had been talking
in concrete terms. Just another one of those crazy parables
maybe. And now this: tonight he was in the ground, looking
for all the world like a dead man.
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A couple days went by in my back yard. Rain, then sun. Then
rain again. The neighbor said this was perfect weather for
planting grass, but lying sprawled out at the edge of the
grassy side of the yard, I wasn't believing the neighbor.
I was cursing life for ruining my grass. It's a funny thing,
I guess, but there was a part of me, most of me, that was
expecting the seeds to stay dead, to turn into little moldy
piles of dirt.
Which is why I was so incredulous about a week later when
I discovered, after another afternoon of depressed sprawling,
that there were tiny little sprouts popping up all over the
bare dirt. For five minutes I lay there looking around seeing
nothing, and then, bang!, there they were, right under my
nose. How had I missed them? Not only were those little seeds
sprouting, but they were sprouting profusely. I was caught
off guard, astounded by life. I will cautiously confess that,
there in the middle (of the grassy side, of course) of my
yard, I may have done a sort of hopping-around kind of celebration.
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Tonight I'm sitting here sipping my tea in this cafe, watching
life flow all around me, remembering death which is our gift
from God. Tonight the shadow of the cross spreads over the
entire world. That's what the priest said this afternoon.
And I can feel the chill of it for sure. But I am also quiet
and at peace because we've finally gotten there -- after
forty days of repentance, after a week of struggle, after
the scourging and the nails, after the spear in the side,
after all, we've made it to Good Friday. The seed is finally
in the ground. And I can say from experience that getting
the seed in the ground is a good place to start. So, for
now, we wait.
And somewhere, about halfway through tomorrow, we'll rouse
ourselves a little, enough to ask our friends what it is
we're waiting for. And our friends, if they are wise, will
say little, say just enough. See here, they'll point, we've
planted in this row our faith in the past. And over there
lies beneath the surface our hope for the future. And right
here at our feet, planted and watered with care, here is
our love of the present. Who knows what might sprout up out
of this rich soil? Sometimes the cancer grows. Sometimes
the planes don't land. Sometimes the bridges you build lead
nowhere. But somewhere on the other side of our long Holy
Saturday is the dawn of Easter Sunday when the waiting will
be over and the fogged glass will be made clear and, blessing
of all blessings, we will know as we are known.
I am finishing my tea and then my phone is ringing. It is
the voice a friend. We are heading home now, he says. Come
and eat with us. It is a good time for you to call, I say.
It is Good Friday and we are waiting.
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