Practicing the Stories that Matter – by EcoFaith Recovery Pastor/Organizer Robyn Hartwig

It is Easter Sunday afternoon. The congregation I serve just finished the last of five worship services held over these past two and a half days in celebration of Holy Week. Later this evening, I will join people I love for Easter dinner. Right now I am cherishing this afternoon space after the last joyous notes of the organ, bells and choir have been offered. Now I sit here in my office in silence letting it all sink in.

For nearly 2000 years, each time our earth has returned to this approximate spot in our orbit around the sun, followers of Jesus have practiced telling this old, old story. For many centuries before that, Jesus’ own Jewish people celebrated Passover at approximately this same time. They continue to do so to this day. And for countless centuries before that, at right about this same place in earth’s orbit, human beings in the northern hemisphere celebrated the new life that inevitably emerged at the spring equinox. This confrontation with death and celebration of new life is embedded deeply into the human story, the earth story, and the divine story. Yet we humans are susceptible to creating and believing distorted stories… false stories.

Through the gift of ritual and spiritual practice, we return to the stories that engage us most fully in partnering with God on the journey through death to new life. We can even repent from the distortions in our own faith stories and reclaim the best of them for our time and place. Over these past three days I have found myself reflecting a great deal on the importance of reclaiming, recovering and rehearsing the most true and life-giving parts of these stories. Because so many of us have come to refer to this as simply “Practice #3,” that is exactly what kept floating through my mind during these Holy Week celebrations.

Although I did not preach this Sunday, my spouse, Janet Parker did. I was moved by her acknowledgement in her Easter sermon that “We all know how easy it can be to get stuck in grief or depression or shame.” Getting stuck in these stories does not serve us, our neighbors or God. She went onto ask:

Isn’t it true that much of how we experience reality is determined by the story we tell ourselves about it?  And when our experience of reality is painful or disappointing, sometimes it’s just easier to expect life to be that way, because at least then, we’re prepared.  At least then, we can exert a measure of control over our lives. The women who came to anoint Jesus’ body had a story—a deeply painful story, but one that made sense.  Jesus had been betrayed, crucified and buried. They had seen it all. That was reality.  As bad as it was, they knew what to do in that reality. They knew their roles, and they knew the script.  But while they weren’t looking, the script had changed. The story that Jesus’ crucifixion seemed to prove, that might makes right and hate overpowers love, was suddenly and irreversibly turned upside down on Easter morning.

Of course this “good news” of God’s commitment to do a new thing through our stories was and is deeply embedded in the Jewish tradition. It is a part of other faith traditions, too. Janet’s sermon reminded me of an Easter Prayer called On Generosity written by Biblical scholar, Walter Brueggemann. It calls me back to the power of this long tradition of communal faith to reframe my story and the importance of being on this journey of spiritual practice with so many of you. Together we reframe and reclaim what it means to be faith-based leaders practicing a story that makes a real difference in the world. I will share that poem below in case these words might likewise be a gift to you in some quiet moment you have to let it all soak in:

…On our own, we conclude:
that there is not enough to go around
we are going to run short

Finish your creation…
in wonder, love and praise. Amen.

Amen,

Robyn