God is the compost heap
My Easter morning reflection on practicing resurrection, along with a call to action: Let's seed and grow the world that we most want to live in!
It felt very important to me this year—with my role as a spiritual leader in my community and tradition—to be as clear as possible (within the constraints of the format of a sermon) about what I think it means to live a life that is faithful to the core values that were embraced, taught, and practiced by the early followers of the main character in the Easter drama.
And also to tell the truth about some of the things that it doesn’t mean.
And ultimately, I hope, to call together those of us—regardless of tradition or identity—who are keen to consistently embody the values of the world that we most long to inhabit. When we partner with life in that way, life abounds.
[Meanwhile, here is something that is beautiful and compelling that is going on in my community in Maine this week: The indigenous led, multi-faith Journey of Friendship and Peace, aimed at powerfully embodying the shared universal values of kindness, acceptance, mutual care, and respect.]
sermon preached at Edgecomb Community Church | April 20, 2025
You’ve got to imagine. It doesn’t make any sense.
Thursday night you were sharing a meal. He washed your feet. And went to pray in the garden. He was arrested in the middle of the night. The next day he was executed. Gone. Dead.
On Saturday you hung low; hid yourself from the blow back. You tried to comprehend what the hell just happened. You barely slept last night.
Then this morning, you wake up from your fitful sleep hearing a blur of voices in the other room. Women’s voices. You throw on some jeans and a t-shirt, and go out to hear what they’re saying.
They aren’t making any sense. Everybody’s there, talking at the same time. Wild theories are already spouting off among the other men.
But you look at Mary. She’s calm. You look at Joanna, so is she. Her eyes are curious. And the same with the other Mary, and all of the women. Serene, almost. What happened to them?
It doesn’t make any sense. You’ve got to see it to believe it.
You shove past everybody, and run barefooted to the garden where you know they laid him in a grave and sealed it up.
It’s wide open. And empty.
It doesn’t make any sense. What happened?
I’m going to end this sermon by insisting that you are invited to practice resurrection.
When I speak of resurrection I speak of something that is a mystery.
I’m going to end this sermon by telling you that you are invited to be part of that mystery. How you partake; how, precisely, you are meant to participate, I don’t know. But I know that practices of resurrection are always creative manifestations of life against the odds. I know, as often as not, that they are acts of love and care that appear ordinary, even though they have extraordinary effects. And I know that everyone of you is capable of contributing in powerful ways to a garden full of resurrections.
I first started believing in Jesus when I was four years old. That’s my story anyway. I don’t know if I ever didn’t believe in Jesus, in one way or another. I grew up on the gospels. My dad was a preacher. My dad played Jesus in our church Easter pageant every year. Our church did a big production, several shows each day leading up to Easter. From about 8 to 14 years old, or so, I watched my dad get crucified and rise again several times every Easter season. Freud would have a hay day.
When I was growing up my understanding of the Christian faith was that—if I believe in Jesus then I am safe in this life and in the next. My understanding of Christianity was that it is about personal salvation.
But that slowly shifted for me as I grew up, as I studied the faith and practiced the faith, as I learned more about our world and the ways that Christianity has impacted our world—some good ways, and a lot of bad ways. My understanding of my own tradition shifted as I considered more and more what it was that Jesus might have been trying to get at when he said: “The thief comes to steal and kill and destroy, but I have come that you may have life and have it to the full.”
I began to experience how practicing my faith could be about more than my own sense of well-being, my own assurance. And how my own well-being was woven together with the well-being of the whole world.
I began to see faith as a way of life, a way of spiritual practice, that was beyond religious categories, and beyond static statements of faith.
I read books with titles like A New Kind of Christian, and The Meaning of Jesus, and Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith, and Reimagining Christianity. Where things were written like this: “For me being a Christian is a romance, a pilgrimage into the unknown, a process of continual conversion.”
These explorations guided me beyond static statements of faith and into a dynamic lifestyle of continual conversion. In this way of faith it is clear that faith—being a belief in the possibility of life and creativity against the odds—without works is dead.
Faith in that possibility, without action toward it, is dead.
But also, as one of my mentors says: “Work without faith is exhausting.”
We need a little magic and mystery to keep our convictions cranking. It really takes both to transform our visions into reality.
First, it takes faith: We believe in the possibility of a world where everyone’s well-being is woven together, a world devoid of oppression and corruption, a world filled up with creativity and care.
And then, it takes work. It takes practice. We actively practice being that world. We actively live in a way that is aligned with that vision for the world, even and especially when the world, as it actually is, is obstructed by the immensities of oppression and corruption.
That world of immense obstructions is the sort of world that Jesus lived and ministered in. That possibility, that’s the sort of vision that he was casting with his ministry. That alignment, that’s the way that he was living and calling his followers to live.
And the resurrection? The resurrection was some mysterious braid of possibility with actuality. It was the spirit of what might yet be, brought into being. It was what Father Richard Rohr calls “the confluence between spirit and matter”.
But what happens when our dreams for a world more equitable and just and whole and free, become a nightmare? When our best hopes for the world are dashed by forces outside ourselves? by the atrocious behaviors of a few powerful people? Especially when some of those people label themselves and their acts as righteous, even categorize themselves and their acts as Christian.
In our dynamic practice of faith, my dear church, we cannot stand for that.
And in my position, as a Christian leader, here on Easter morning, let me be clear that I do not stand with any Christian leader who is not speaking out against the evils of White Nationalism in our nation, who is not unambiguously condemning prison systems that are designed for profit and that feed on racism. I do not stand with any Christian leader who is not consistently calling out the simple injustice of the imbalance of wealth in our world where many hundreds of millions of people are hungry, and where there are 15 people who each boast over 100 billion dollars in personal wealth, and any one of those 15 people—if they followed Jesus’ message to feed the hungry—could afford to nourish, for 5 years, the over 800 million people who are hungry in our world, not to mention the over 300 million who are near to starvation, and they would still have enough wealth to be among the top wealthiest people in the world. That’s a conversion I could get behind.
Jesus would have his work cut out for him today. If only he were among us.
But Jesus died. He died because he called out atrocities like that.
I’m going to tell you something that might sound a little odd coming from the mouth of a preacher, but stay with me, alright: Jesus didn’t die to save your soul, or mine.
Our souls did not need to be washed clean by the mutilation of someone else’s flesh and dignity. God didn’t and doesn’t need a sacrifice in order to love you and liberate you. As if God were some dictator hell bent on proving his power and righteousness.
God loved you from the beginning, and God loves you now, and God will meet you wherever you are to help you find your way to whatever form of liberation you personally need.
God is not like the dictator who rules in self-righteous vanity with a heavy hand. God is more akin to the soil. God is the compost heap. God is the source material that enriches and nourishes life. God is the sun that feeds life. God is the rain that pumps sap through our veins.
God is the source of life. And insofar as the cycle of life depends on the compost heap, God is not overcome by death, but integrates death into the constant surge of life.
So, if God didn’t need Jesus to die, why did Jesus die on a Roman cross on a holiday weekend 2000 years ago? Jesus died on a Roman cross because he challenged every authority in his day that was willing to steal, kill, and destroy for the sake of their own glory, their own power, their own profit.
Jesus was executed by the power-hungry authorities of his day because he challenged the very nature of their authority. AND because he presented a compelling alternative to their twisted conceptions of power.
That alternative? To practice resurrection.
Jesus’ death was not exceptional. Jesus was one of countless—and I mean literally uncounted numbers of people who were crucified by the Roman empire in the name of “keeping the peace”. Jesus’s death was brutal. But it was not exceptional.
And the extent to which Jesus’ resurrection was exceptional is that—whatever it was—it inspired a movement that slowly spread and took root and grew.
Though, before long, within a few hundred years or so, that movement got co-opted by the same empire that it was designed to challenge. And the whole movement that was based on the life and ministry of Jesus, and that was based on the experience of the resurrected Christ—the phenomenon that we categorize with the blanket word Christianity—for hundreds of years, as often as not, has been a tangled mess of hypocrisy and power grabs. And, sure, some good intentions, often gone horribly awry. But just as many devious acts carried out with wicked intent.
Even today there continues to be atrocious misuses and abuses of my tradition, of Christianity, of the powerful movement that Jesus the Christ seeded with his resurrection.
These abuses are real, and they are many.
But—people of good faith—the seeds of resurrection remain in the compost heap of Christian history. And the seeds of resurrection, good people, exist still in our tradition, in the way of Jesus, even today.
The seeds of resurrection abound in our world beyond the confines of our own religious identities. The seeds of resurrection abound for those of us who are willing to take them and plant them and nurture them and be them with the ways that we live our lives rooted in the source soil of love and generosity, of care, courage and creativity.
Jesus did not die and rise again to simply save our own individual souls, but to seed collective salvation, abundant life, life to the full. And to invite us to do the very same thing, every day, in every way as we go about our days—to seed loving, courageous, care-filled acts of resurrection.
As often as we practice resurrection we are participating in the salvation of the world.
So what does it look like to practice resurrection? Just like the tomb, the possibilities are wide open…
We practice resurrection when we rise early to heed the day and to hear the birds. When we pay attention to the wisdom of this earth, when we listen for it to fill our hearts, we practice resurrection.
We practice resurrection when we encourage our neighbors who are lonely, when we care for our neighbors who are ill, and when we visit with those who are imprisoned by the state and by prisons of their own making. Whenever we treat others with love and care, we practice resurrection.
We practice resurrection everytime that we break bread together and when we make meals together and when we feed our neighbors who are hungry. Whenever we gather at a table with laughter and gratitude for the good gifts of this earth, we practice resurrection.
We practice resurrection when we grow flowers and when we grow vegetables and herbs. And when we share our produce with each other. And when we place flowers on the graves of our beloved ones, and when we fashion flowers into crowns to place on the heads of our children.
We practice resurrection when we use our voices and our creativity and our bodies and our presence to publicly protest corruption, oppression, and injustice. When we speak our conscience with courage—guided in the way of peace and collective power—we practice resurrection.
We practice resurrection when we offer kindness and due respect to those who differ from us, even those with whom we adamantly disagree. Every time that we gesture toward the humanity of others we practice resurrection.
When we move through our days in these ways we not only participate, but friends, our souls are liberated by the power of these practices of resurrection.
We are freed from corruption and oppression by the collective power of resurrection. So let us be bold and whole-hearted, let us be tender and open-hearted. On this Easter morning, let us receive and participate in the salvation of the world.
Thank you Aram; thoughtful and thought-provoking words!
An Easter message I wish could be preached at every church who calls itself Christian. 🙏