Sunny Notes: 04.08.26 - The Resurrection of Life
Following this past Sunday's Easter and Flower Communion service, we received a lot of positive feedback. It was one of my favorite services we've held since I arrived at BUF. And how meaningful and adorable were the kids in their processional with the flowers? (see photo below of Ann Stevenson's granddaughter)
I also heard a few comments from folks who previously had been hesitant to attend an Easter service. I get it. Easter is the oldest and most important festival in the Christian year. And UUs—with our Christian history and non-creedal present and shared value of pluralism—we have a complicated relationship with a holiday like Easter and an idea like resurrection.
But as Rev. Tessie said in her Opening Words, it was “a celebration of the meaning of Easter through the lens of our faith.” Through the lens of our faith, resurrection can appear in many forms—like the story I shared from Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, an Asian American rabbi who leads Central Synagogue in New York City. Though her own Reform Jewish tradition rejected the idea of resurrection long ago, Rabbi Angela saw resurrection in a new light on a trip to Costa Rica.
As described in her book, “Heart of a Stranger: An Unlikely Rabbi’s Story of Faith, Identity, and Belonging, in Costa Rica” she “noticed that the farmland was encircled by perfect rows of the strangest-looking trees: The trunks were thin, identical in height, each topped with a tuft of branches sprouting in every direction like a bad haircut.” Angela would discover that ash from volcanic activity made the soil there extremely rich and fertile. These strange-looking trees had started not as seedlings, but as branches cut off from trees and used as fence posts. As Angela describes it, “in the fertile soil of [Costa Rica], this dead wood—with a kiss of the miraculous—took root, sprouted, and literally came back to life.”
The cold of winter is seemingly dead. The fence posts in Costa Rica were seemingly dead. So many aspects of our world and our planet are seemingly dead—in need of resurrection. And yet, in the same way the winter and fence posts still contain life, so too, may our world and our planet. May we remember that resurrection appears in many forms.
— Sunny, minister