Managing Resurrection Expectations

I know resurrection happens. If you’ve ever given or received genuine forgiveness and reconciliation, you’ve tasted resurrection. If you’ve ever seen an addict get sober and rise from those ashes—or been one—you know it happens, too. If you’ve ever come back to yourself in the depth and pain of grief and realized there just might be hope for a new day, that’s the beginning of resurrection. I don’t have to know exactly what happened at Jesus’ tomb to know resurrection happens. The new life Jesus’ followers experienced as they prayed through their shock and grief after his execution brought—and still brings—new life and agency to those stuck in cultural ruts of oppression and despair, and sometimes to those of us stuck in chains of our own making.

I know resurrection happens, and I want to feel it. I’ve had years when I observed Lent, taking on a new practice of awareness or using the opportunity to let go some self-defeating habit. Both create space for new life to arise from the deathliness of old ways of being and perceiving seemingly set in concrete. Some years I’ve come to Holy Week with my heart tendered and needing to walk through it with Jesus and his followers; to feel the shock and horror of Jesus’ arrest; to stand with the other women at the foot of the cross and witness Jesus being crucified; to sense the disciples’ terrified huddling in the upper room waiting to see if they’ll be hunted down and executed as well; to feel the confusion, wonder and exhilaration at the empty tomb. This year feels more traditional Quaker for me, though that could just be an excuse as I watch the progression through the season with a secret eye roll, as if I can’t really imagine there being an Easter for me this year. Nothing wrong, just not feeling it.

I know resurrection happens. And maybe that’s part of the problem. I associate it with strong feelings. I want the feelings to show me God’s clear strong presence. What if that’s a set up? What if I’m making myself blind to the new life, the new creation happening all around me—and dare I even wonder, within me?—because it’s not what I expect?

The kingdom of heaven, Jesus says in many different ways, is not what we’d expect. The kingdom of heaven is like a woman who hid yeast in 3 measures of flour, and the yeast just silently worked away until the whole thing was leavened (Matt 13:33). I mean seriously! Heaven? What, if there’s a little bit of levity, God’s there? This bakerwoman God sure isn’t giving me what I want or expect. In telling this parable, Jesus was flouting everybody’s expectations yet again.

For one thing, it’s so darn simple. We don’t have to do anything. How on earth can we know heaven or new life or transformation if we haven’t worked for it and earned it? This parable denies all our perfectionistic meritocracies. Everything in me objects. If I can earn it, I’m at least in control, right? But Jesus is saying that after all the work I’ve done trying to achieve new life, it just bubbles up on its own. Seriously?

And this bakerwoman—it’s got to be corrupt if a woman is touching it. Period. What does a woman have to do with creating new life, I ask you? And yeast? Everybody in Jesus’ audience knew yeast as a metaphor for a corrupting influence. At Passover there’s a practice of throwing out all the old yeast from your kitchen and the corrupting influences from your lives. And these corrupting influences may well be ideas about what is corrupt and what is not. I mean, the kingdom of heaven is like a woman hiding yeast in flour and the yeast just doing what it does naturally.

And as if a bakerwoman God creating heaven by hiding yeast isn’t enough, we have the scandal of extravagance. We hear 3 measures of flour and think cups like my pizza dough recipe that has to be doubled or tripled. But she isn’t just making bread for her family. This 3 measures of flour is like a heaping bushel full. It’s almost a laughable image. What kind of container would she use? Were her arms long enough to even begin mixing it all? Somehow, she rises to the occasion, and yeast gets hidden in that abundance of flour and goes to work, maybe like the Spirit praying within us with sighs too deep for words. And this small amount of yeast, hidden in this large amount of flour doesn’t make any judgments. It doesn’t avoid THAT part of the flour because it’s not good enough to rise. The yeast doesn’t judge or discriminate, it just slowly and silently brings transformation to everything it touches. I expect my resurrections to be splashy and have a good story, thank you very much. Jesus is saying we don’t even see it working. And still it rises.

I have to confess this little tiny parable has given me much hope this spring. As I read or hear about people’s insistence on getting what they want—whether in the ways they wield their weapons, or the ways they control or abuse other’s bodies or well-being, or how they display contempt for those deemed Other, or how they rape and pillage the natural world, or how they drive their cars, and you know this list could go on and on and on—as I contemplate our insistence on getting what we want, it’s gotten harder and harder in moments to have any hope. Then I’ll read a story about one person doing one thing in front of them and life springing from that one little act. A woman putting a picnic table in her front yard and changing the nature of relationship in her neighborhood as people stop to talk and actually get to know each other. Somebody asking a question of someone from another faith instead of making assumptions and finding a new friend and the opportunity to extend the dialogue to others. A chef hearing about a city devastated by a hurricane and deciding to go feed people—and now feeding thousands daily around the world after natural disasters and in warzones. A little act of kindness that turns another’s world around. Yeast works. Resurrection happens.

We practice resurrection by embracing Life wherever it appears. We won’t do it perfectly, and Life will take many blows in this world of death and destruction. The risen dough will be punched down, and yet again it rises with an even finer texture. It is the nature of Life, like yeast, to rise and rise again.

Any way we slice it, Life returns. While I still want the big splashy experiences of resurrection, I choose to shift my expectations, to watch for tiny signs of Life and Love. Whenever we give or receive kindness or gentleness, wherever we extend patience or act with self-control, whenever generosity flows or peace abounds, Love wins. And resurrection happens. Let us, too, practice resurrection, even when the working of it is hidden, and we can’t take credit for any of it. It’s right there, where we stand in faith, not knowing anything for sure, that resurrection happens.