Karl Barth, in a 1962 lecture that most people have not read and everyone should, said this: “The goal of human life is not death but resurrection.” Simple enough to stitch on a pillow, harder to actually mean, and May is the month we find out whether we mean it.
The early church had a name for this season after Easter, a name worth the trip to the encyclopedia: mystagogy. The short version is that Easter was never just a day but the beginning of learning how to inhabit what had just happened, to walk around inside the resurrection and discover what it asked of ordinary life. Paul, writing to Corinth, put it in the language of bodies, one body with many members, each one necessary and none of them optional, all of them suffering together when one suffers and honored together when one is honored. That is not inspiration exactly, but more a description that gets more interesting the longer you look at it. May is the month to look at it.
Mother’s Day arrives on May 10 carrying, as it always does, more than one thing at once. For some of you it is flowers and phone calls and lunch that someone else pays for. For others it is one of the harder Sundays of the year, a morning spent carrying grief or longing or a particular kind of absence that does not fit the greeting card version of the day. A congregation wide enough to hold both of those people in the same room, on the same morning, is itself the thing resurrection makes possible, and we will be that congregation.
Also on May 10, we will dedicate Evelyn Kowalewski, daughter of Mark and Elaine, to God and to this congregation. To dedicate a child is to say out loud what is already true, that raising her will require more people than two, that shepherding a life toward flourishing is more than any household can accomplish alone. Our worship this season keeps returning to Psalm 23, to green pastures and still waters and a table prepared in the presence of everything that might otherwise undo us. Evelyn receives all of that from this congregation, and so do her parents, because parenthood is hungry and thirsty work.
On May 16, we will clean the American Tobacco Trail together from 9:00 to 10:30 in the morning, fresh air and good company and the quiet work of caring for something that belongs to everyone. If the risen Christ is in the business of reclaiming rooms and roads and common ground, picking up what someone left behind on a Saturday morning seems like cheerful participation in that project.
May 17 is carrying a full load. In the morning we celebrate Sonshine Sunday, our annual celebration of the Sonshine community for special needs adults and one of the most genuinely energizing expressions of who Yates actually is. This ministry has been woven into the life of this congregation long enough that calling it a ministry almost undersells it; it is simply part of what we are, one body with many members, the Spirit making communion possible across difference rather than erasing the difference to get there. More details on the missions page inside.
That same evening, a group from Yates will travel to Orange County Correctional to join Sunday worship at the Peace Center, in partnership with Alamance Orange Prison Ministry. Paul ended up in prison more than once and kept writing letters from there, which is to say that the church has never been entirely comfortable staying only in comfortable places. We will show up, sit down, and sing with people the world has largely decided not to think about. The NC Department of Corrections now requires volunteers to apply online in advance, so please contact me at christopher@yateschurch.org or see the missions page inside, and do it soon.
Memorial Day weekend closes the month, and the cookouts are warranted and the long weekend is a gift. And in this congregation there are households for whom this weekend is something else entirely, an anniversary of a kind, a name remembered, a folded flag, a person who did not come home from a place they went because they believed it mattered. A resurrection people does not skip past that, because we know something about what it costs to give a life for others, and we will honor it without rushing toward the next thing.
Then, on the last Sunday of May, Pentecost arrives and the Spirit fills the room and the body speaks in more voices than anyone thought to expect, and the summer begins. One body, many members, none of them optional, all of them necessary.
Barth was right, as usual. The goal is not death. May we spend the whole month living like we believe it.
Grace and Peace,
Christopher