Daffy, possibly because of all those trips to my bedroom, imprinted on me and followed me everywhere I went. Cute Quack followed Daffy. That summer I had two duck companions. This started to become a bit of a problem when school began again in the Fall. The ducks kept trying to get on the school bus with me. I developed a method for handling the problem. I would walk out my front door and begin to walk slowly around the front of the house. When I reached the second corner, I would break out in a dead run. The ducks were usually left in the backyard lost and a bit confused.
One day the big white duck was struck by a car. My dad buried him in our garden. I was disconsolate and prayed and prayed that my duck would come back to life. The little mallard was clearly as sad as I was and spent the rest of the day fruitlessly searching for Daffy.
That Saturday we went to the neighboring town for shopping. When we got home a familiar sight met our eyes—a big white duck waddling around the yard with a little mallard in tow.
I was ecstatic. God had answered my prayers! I was so certain that I even started to convince my Mom a little bit.
She questioned: “John, are you sure the duck was really dead?”
“There is no chance that the duck that I buried was anything but dead,” my father answered with great certainty.
I checked the grave. The dirt had not been disturbed.
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Well, it turned out that a neighbor, upon seeing the dead duck by the side of the road, had brought over a new duck.
When I was a kid the world of the Bible felt very proximate. It was easy to inhabit a miraculous world where Lazarus rises out of his tomb, prayer could move mountains, and where God might just give me back my dead duck if I prayed hard enough.
The finality of road kill had not yet fully sunk in for me ... as it had for my Dad.
This morning I inhabit a world where the only type of resurrection in which I can habitually believe is metaphorical.
Daffy the duck doesn’t rise from the dead, but a kind neighbor might come on Saturday morning and bring a kid a new duck.
In the place of a God who undoes death and destruction, I have often relied on a belief in a good community of people who do justice and kindness.
And we are a resurrection people …
Through small acts of fidelity we work to make better futures possible for each other.
This isn’t adequate though.
Cute Quack could have told you that. After following the white Duck around for a couple hours he got disenchanted. He wasn’t ultimately fooled by the replacement duck. The next Fall, cute quack found her wings and caught flight.
This past week there was an article in Christianity Today entitled “If Easter is only a symbol, Then to hell with it.”
The author writes:
The truest fact of the universe this Eastertide is not death tolls, emptied sanctuaries, or overcrowded hospitals. The truest fact of the universe is an empty tomb. The Resurrection is the only evidence that love triumphs over death, weakness prevails over strength, and beauty outlives ashes. If Jesus is risen in actual history, with all the palpability of flesh, fingers, bone, and blood, there is hope that our mourning will be comforted and that death will not have the final word.
I am comparatively wealthy. I am anxious this Easter, but not about whether we will have dinner today.
I can settle (mostly) for a metaphorical Easter.
But what of those...
whose life is grinding poverty and unremitting pain.
Can they settle for a metaphor?
Whose whole lives are circumscribed, mining for metals for our phones?
Can they settle for a metaphor?
Who spend lives covered with pesticides so that we can have cheap strawberries and die young.
Can they settle for a metaphor?
Child soldier hopped up on drugs armed to kill?
Is a metaphorical resurrection enough?
Children who are trafficked for sex and die in lonely places with needles in their arms.
Will metaphor bring meaning to those lonely deaths?
Babies taken by bombs before they have plucked their first flower?
What hope is there in image of flowers in bulbs and apples in blossoms for them?
Generally speaking, we are people rich enough and connected enough that we can rely on ourselves and our family with a sprinkling of Easter metaphor to get by.
The only shallow graves we are apt to dig our for pet ducks.
Yet, not this Easter.
The shallow graves are being dug in Iran, Italy, and New York City.
Death stalks more boldly in the usual places—our long term care homes, prisons, homeless shelters — but death also stalks in grocery store lines and in our church sanctuaries.
There are some estimating that as many as 200,000 Americans could be dead by the beginning of May.
We do not need the Jesus of metaphorical Easter ducks this year!
We desperately need the risen Christ the harbinger of a new world.
This year let us look hard and see that [t]he stone is rolled back,/ not papier-mache,/Not a stone in a story,/But the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of/Time will eclipse for each of us/The wide light of day.
I hope this year that we learn that we cannot settle for any Easter hope that leaves behind those who suffer meaningless death at the whims of capricious leaders. I hope that this year we learn that we cannot settle for any Easter hope that leaves behind those who die alone.
This could become us. It always could have become us.
It is 5:57 on Easter Sunday, 2020.
The only hope in this world lies here:
Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.
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