Behold the cycle of life

By Tom Ehrich

Midway through Lent, our home furnace sputtered. Despite efforts to restore its health, the 16-year-old unit died.

Rather than reverence old metal and machinery, I called in a crew to remove the old and install the new. Soon we had heat. And that, of course, was the point: heat, not reverence for things once useful.

A week later, as Palm Sunday “Hossanas!” changed to “Crucify him!” our hot water heater took its last breath.  Again, not wasting a second to reverence things past, I had a crew remove the old and install the new. The point, as with the furnace, was hot water, so that we could proceed in life.

In a variation on this fundamental truth – things must fall to the earth before new life can occur – my wife and I went to a used furniture store to find me a desk. We found exactly what I wanted. It wasn’t new to God’s green earth, but it was new to me, and it gives me the minimalist and functional study that I want. 

On our way home on Holy Saturday – as the body of Jesus rested in a tomb – my wife spotted a new automatic car wash in Valatie. I waited patiently – not three days, but long enough – and soon drove our car into the tomb, where cleansing water and warm breath removed winter grime, and drove out of the tomb refreshed.

Not everything needs to die for new life to occur. Yes, some things do die, from fall crops to elderly furnaces, and new life starts up when the new is installed. Some things need to be made available to others, like used but eminently useful furniture, like churches, schools and shopping malls being reborn as housing, like older people being reconfigured as grandparents and community volunteers.

And some things just need to be cleansed – like Jesus at his baptism – so that fresh days can be found.

This is the cycle of life in God’s creation. Dying and new birth, being discarded and repurposed, and being cleansed for a fresh day.

Jesus went through all three of these cycles. His body was destroyed, but then his mission was given new birth. He was cast aside by the arrogant powers of darkness, but then, by the grace of God, he was repurposed: now not the healer, but the one who sent out the healers. He was cleansed and anointed by his beloved, so that he could leave her to a fresh day.

Like earth in the days before Spring, we are surrounded by things that are dead or dying. Hope in American democracy, trust in each other, a spirit of tolerance, wisdom and knowledge, kindness and forbearance – all are under assault by the darkness.

But now, to paraphrase Shakespeare, “now the winter of our discontent is made glorious summer” by the sun in the sky and the Son in our midst.

Thanks be to God who gives us the victory in our Lord Jesus Christ!