As in (some) years past, I wrote a new song for Easter to play and perform for the post-Easter Sunday episode of What I’m Thinking, my weekly video program at holycrosshilo.com. It’s a song that refers both to the events of the first Easter and of the Sunday that followed.
Am I thinking this week after Easter Sunday? Well, no, not yet. But I am singing “Tell Me to Turn Around.”
Here’s a transcript:
In the week after Easter Sunday I’m afraid I find it difficult to think about much of anything. That’s sad, because the Gospel lesson for this coming Sunday is the story of Thomas and his doubts (John 20:19-31). Poor Thomas gets less of my thinking than he deserves.
As a result, What I’m Thinking this week is What I’m Singing. This is something I have done a few times at Easter over the years, and so I’m pleased to bring you this song: “Tell Me to Turn Around.”
Where have you brought him? How can I see him? I want to know why these ugly things happen. But for now, just tell me. Tell me to turn around.
[Chorus]
Turn around, look behind, where I haven’t looked before. Turn around, clear my eyes. The life is glowing, and I am crowing That the world has changed since I turned around.
[Verses]
You told me already we’ve lost him completely. I want to know why these ugly things happen. Mary, what more can you tell me today? Tell me to turn around.
You told me, and told me, but what good are your stories? I want to know why these ugly things happen. Why are you lying about his wounds, brothers? And you tell me to turn around.
In the gospel stories about Easter, there’s a common theme. It’s unbelief. People heard – from angels, initially – that Jesus had risen from the dead, and… they didn’t believe them. Later people heard from other people that Jesus had risen from the dead, and they didn’t believe the people. I guess that makes sense. If you don’t believe angels, how likely are you to believe people?
Once there was an ‘apapane who didn’t believe in love.
If that seems hard to believe, well, it was hard to believe. He had been raised with two sisters by attentive parents who fed them well, kept them warm in the rain, and taught them all to sing. They flew with him, they brought him to good trees to find bugs and nectar, and they kept him company when the nights got long and lonely.
But he didn’t believe in love.
You might be thinking that his sisters teased him all the time and that’s why he didn’t believe in love. It’s true. They teased him. But not much, really. More to the point, the teasing didn’t bother him. He teased them back and they all would laugh at the silly things they’d say.
Still, he didn’t believe in love.
“You’re just taking care of me because it keeps the family going,” he told his parents, who really didn’t know what to say about that.
“You’re just good to me because you expect I’ll be good to you,” he told his sisters, and he was good to them, but as he said, it was because he expected them to be good to him.
I suppose it might have been because nearly the entire time since he’d cracked the shell that the skies had been gray, the winds had been cold, and the rain had plummeted down.
I sometimes find it hard to believe in love after too many days of cold, grey, windy rain.
He and his sisters had put in a hard day of nectar- and bug-seeking. There might have been ohi’a flowers in blossom, but they were hard to see in the grey light. The bugs were hiding from the rain, not even troubling to go find nectar to eat. The three siblings huddled for the night on a branch, cold, wet, and hungry.
He was grateful for their warmth but he still didn’t believe in love.
When morning came, he blinked his eyes to an unfamiliar light. The clouds had cleared overnight, and the wind gently rustled the leaves. He and his sisters, all three, stared at the golden light of the sun rising over the trees. As it got higher, the ohi’a blossoms opened in scarlet and gold glory. As it got higher, its warmth dried their feathers.
“Wow,” said the sisters. “What a difference that makes.”
“More than you know,” said their brother. “It’s like a completely different world.”
“Is this a world where you can believe in love?” asked one sister.
He thought about it for a while.
“You know, I think it might be,” he said.
They helped one another get their drying feathers into shape – that’s kind of an ‘apapane hug – and flew off into the sunrise over the glorious bloom of ohi’a.
As they flew, they sang together. You know what they sang?
“I think I believe in love.”
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Story
I write these stories ahead of time, then tell them from memory – memory plus whatever I feel like saying in the moment.
You and I are familiar with mynas. They’re all over the place, for one thing. And they have a habit of shrieking at us for no particular reason. Here at Church of the Holy Cross, we’re also used to picking up after them because they try to build nests under the eaves and they’re remarkably bad at doing it.
You and I aren’t so familiar with the Manu-o-Ku, known in other parts of the world as the white tern. They tend to be a little bigger than a myna with longer wings. The myna has brown feathers with black feathers on the head and that distinctive yellow mask around the eyes leading to the bright yellow beak. The Manu-o-Ku is all white except for black eyes and a straight black beak. They don’t live here on Hawai’i Island, but you’ll find them – and mynas – living on O’ahu.
Two mynas were watching a manu-o-ku family prepare for laying an egg, and they were pretty critical about it. I may think mynas build messy nests, but the mynas were surprised that the manu-o-ku didn’t build a nest at all. “Where is the egg going to go?” asked one. “They haven’t done anything about a place to keep it from rolling away,” said the other.
The manu-o-ku ignored all this – they heard it, of course, because mynas aren’t usually quiet. They just flew from branch to branch, checking things out, and didn’t fetch a single piece of grass to build a nest.
Finally they settled onto a spot where a branch forked. It made a little spot with a hollow, like the bowl of a spoon – a very shallow spoon. I don’t think I’d have noticed it, but the manu-o-ku did. Somewhat later, the mynas returned to find that a single egg rested in that little depression, and that the father and mother manu-o-ku were taking turns keeping it warm.
“I’m shocked,” said one of the mynas. “I am, too,” said the other. “That egg is going to fall off.” “And if the egg doesn’t,” said the first, “the chick will.”
The manu-o-ku heard this and said nothing.
About a month later, the egg hatched, and the newborn chick’s feet were able to easily hold onto the forked branch of its nest. The parents brought fish and squid from the ocean to feed it. “That will never work,” said the mynas to one another. “That chick is doomed for sure.”
But it wasn’t. It took its first flight. It stayed nearby and the parents continued to bring it meals. It learned to catch its own food. It took to the skies.
“That shouldn’t have worked,” said the first myna. “It was an awful risk,” said the second.
“It’s a good thing that it worked, then, isn’t it?” called one of the manu-o-ku, and flew away in a flurry of white feathers.
You know, Jesus took a risk when he taught people to love one another, because some people don’t want to do that and they got angry about it. He took a risk when he loved people enough that he didn’t act violently when they came to be violent to him. He took a risk by going to the cross, and that risk took him to the grave. If you want to make things better, those actions shouldn’t work.
Jesus rose from the dead, and suddenly all those actions did work, all those risks of love and of peace and of death itself. It was more precarious than a manu-o-ku egg on a branch, but on that Easter Day love won, and it will always win.
By the way, we have taken a risk this morning. We’ve placed Easter eggs around the church and in a moment we’re going to ask you to find them. The risk is that if you don’t find all the real eggs, in a couple of days of sunshine they’ll get really warm and smelly. So help us out here. Make something good happen for yourself and for all of us. Find those eggs. It will be an Easter risk that worked.
by Eric Anderson
There is no video of this story, which I told before the young people headed out for their Easter Egg hunt. For the record, all the colored boiled eggs were retrieved.
“So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.'” – John 20:25
I told you first, Peter. I told you first. “I have seen the Lord,” I told you, “after you had gone away from the grave. He’s alive, I tell you, alive. I have seen the Lord.”
I told you first, Peter, and you… well. I’ve seen your eyes narrow before when things don’t make sense, or you don’t understand. Then you made a comforting noise, but: I had seen the Lord.
Condescension from you isn’t new, Simon Peter. You’re polite, but you’ll always rely on the witness of your own two eyes – or the witness of another guy – even though I had seen the Lord.
Did you hear me that night when I laughed? Oh, the sight of your faces was rich! Where was your superior eye? Though puzzled, your eyelids spread wide! Now we had seen the Lord.
Is it mean of me to then delight when Thomas repeated your cant: “I’ll believe when I see it myself and have touched what I know I can’t.” Even though we had seen the Lord.
Will you learn, Simon Peter, from this? Will you learn to trust more than yourself? Will you learn to appreciate others? Will you learn to believe when a woman tells you: “I have seen the Lord.”
A poem/prayer based on John 20:19-31, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year A, Second Sunday of Easter.
I struggled a great deal to find an image of Mary Magdalene fit for this poem. There ought to be one depicting her declaration “I have seen the Lord!” to the male disciples, but I didn’t find one. She is frequently shown at the crucifixion and, of course, at the empty tomb. Most versions of “Noli me tangere” (Do not hold onto me) leave me cold. Mary has frequently been confused with other women in the Bible, partially because so many of them were named Mary (Miriam), and partially because of a strange tendency on the part of Christians to assume Jesus had few followers in his lifetime, so if two people look similar or have the same name, they must be the same. Pope Gregory I’s 591 Easter homily erroneously conflated Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, and the unnamed “sinful woman” of Luke 7. As a result, European Christians came to assume Mary Magdalene had been a prostitute and the misnomer has lingered and grown. Paintings of the “Penitent Magdalene” are… well. They’re awful. Truly awful.
Veneto’s portrait comes from the “Magdalene as Myrrhbearer” genre. The woman’s side-eye glance comes close to expressing what I imagine Mary Magdalene’s irritation with Jesus’ male disciples. Now if someone would only paint her rolling her eyes, that would be better.
I don’t mean the people of the world – most of them didn’t have any idea what was going on. The people of the Pacific islands wouldn’t hear for over 1700 years. They didn’t get the word in Japan or in China. Some people in India would hear about Jesus and his crucifixion much sooner, but they didn’t know on that first Easter morning.
They didn’t know in Africa, even as close to Jerusalem as Egypt. They didn’t know in Britain or the wide plains of Russia or in the palaces of Rome. They didn’t know in Athens. A few might just have heard the word of Jesus’ crucifixion in his home town of Nazareth – someone on a fast horse might have traveled overnight to reach there – but they wouldn’t have word of what happened Easter morning.
No, the only people who knew that Easter morning, at least as Matthew told it, were two women named Mary – it was apparently a common name in Jesus’ day – and, of course, Jesus.
But that wasn’t my question. How did the world feel that first Easter morning? This globe of ours, this Earth that God had created working with the Word of God, the Word that had taken human shape in Jesus. How did the world feel when Jesus died on Friday? How did the world feel when Jesus rose to life once more on Easter morning?
Well. That’s the story.
According to Matthew’s Gospel, the world shuddered when Jesus died, shuddered with an earthquake that shook people’s bodies and spirits, shuddered with grief and loss. And on Easter morning, the Earth felt that quickening of new life. The Earth perceived an angel descending to the rock-cut tomb where Jesus’ body lay. The Earth asked, “What is this?” as a spark of hope flared deep in its center.
The Earth shook itself again, but this time it shook to cast off the sadness and despair of the last two nights. This time it shook itself to cleanse its depths of sorrow and doubt. This time it shook to make a path for joy. This time it shook to awaken the people on its surface to something new and wondrous and holy and blessed.
Did the Earth shake all across the globe? I don’t know, to be honest. I can imagine, though, that where lava was flowing, it flowed just a little brighter, just a little faster. I can imagine that some of the mountains breathed in and became just a little taller, stretched a little bit further toward the sky. I can imagine that the ocean waves ruffled along the shores as the Earth laughed with joy.
When the angel rolled the stone away, I imagine the Earth settled beneath it just a little bit, so that the stone rolled away down a little slope that hadn’t been there before. When the women began running back to the city to tell their friends, perhaps the Earth smoothed the road so they would not trip and fall.
When Jesus met them on the road and they knelt at his feet, perhaps the Earth softened beneath them. When they ran on, after he greeted them and told them, as the angel had, to bring the good news to their friends, they didn’t trip or fall.
Beneath them, the Earth carried on with turning, with following its orbit around the sun, with moving the continents about, with cradling the oceans and raising the mountains, with turning seamounts into islands in the middle of the sea. Beneath those running women, God’s messengers and apostles that morning, the Earth smiled and laughed for joy, for its Creator and Redeemer lived, and so the Earth would be a home for life as long as time endures.
In its own way, the Earth said, “Christ is risen! Alleluia!”
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Story
In worship, I tell the story from memory. Memory sometimes give way, as today, when I substituted a completely new ending for the one I’d written.
The island creatures had heard about Easter eggs, and they could not figure it out.
“Why would you take eggs out of a perfectly good nest?” asked the ‘apapane.
“We went to such trouble building it in the first place,” said the ‘amakihi, which builds a nest that is much bigger than its eggs.
“You don’t need to build a nest at all,” said the Manu-o-Ku, which lays its egg precariously on a branch to balance there until it hatches.
“You’ve got to keep your eggs protected from the sea spray,” said the noio.
“You could always put your eggs on ledges higher up the mountain,” pointed out the koa’e kea, which was maybe a little bit of a mean thing to say to the noio.
“Or you could lay your eggs in Alaska,” said the kolea, but nobody else really wanted to think about that except for the ‘akekeke which does much the same thing.
“Why would you want to put color on them?” wondered the ‘io. “Our eggs are a nice blue when they’re new, and then they turn paler.”
“We like mottled eggs,” said the ‘akepa. “They’re harder for egg eaters to see in the nest.” Everybody looked a little puzzled at this, because the ‘akepa is bright orange and hard to hide from anything.
“We like mottled eggs, too,” said the i’iwi, and now everybody was puzzled but nobody said anything.
“I also don’t see why you’d hide the eggs,” said the pueo. “A nest in the grass is fine.”
“I prefer a tree,” said the mejiro.
“A palm tree,” said the myna.
“A beach,” said the honu, and everybody looked at her.
“Dig a hole, lay your eggs, and cover it over. That’s how to do it,” she said with assurance, and all the other turtles agreed. The birds were almost as confused about this as about Easter eggs. But that got them all to turn to… the chicken.
“What?” she asked.
“Those humans are using chicken eggs,” they told her.
“That doesn’t mean I understand what they’re doing,” she said.
They waited and they didn’t say anything.
The chicken sighed and said, “I really don’t understand what it all means, but I have seen what they do and how they feel about it. They take eggs that aren’t going to hatch – which makes no sense to me, because what good is an egg that isn’t going to hatch? – and as you’ve all noticed, they put bright colors on it. While they’re doing it, they’re smiling and laughing. They’re doing it together, so when one colors an egg, another one tells them how beautiful it is. When they’re done, they admire them together, and congratulate everyone for a job well done.”
“I guess that must feel good,” said the kolea. “What about the hiding?”
“The adults hide the eggs, and the young ones look for them. And when they do, they’ve got those big smiles again, and they’re laughing. They get excited to find the eggs they’ve colored and the ones the other keiki have colored, even if they aren’t going to hatch.”
“Oh, and they also hide and find eggs that aren’t real eggs,” the chicken said. “Those have food in them.”
Everybody nodded at this. Everybody likes to find food.
“I think the point is the joy,” said the chicken. “From beginning to end, these eggs are about joy. Coloring them, hiding them, finding them, and celebrating them. These eggs are about joy.”
They all nodded at this, too. Eggs are about joy for birds and turtles.
And, it turns out, eggs – Easter eggs – are about joy for human beings, too.
by Eric Anderson
I told this story to begin the children’s Easter Egg hunt on Sunday, April 9, 2023. Unlike stories told in worship, it was not filmed or recorded.
I try to avoid patting myself on the back in public – but if I don’t, what is social media for?
For some years I have chosen to follow two parallel disciplines each Lent. One is a fairly straightforward decision to refrain from something during the forty-six days of the season (I include the Sundays for this). I’ve given up fast food, beer, soda, computer games, and similar kinds of things (though never coffee – never coffee). I have almost never been able to successfully repeat one of these, so I generally have to choose something new and different each year.
The second discipline, on the other hand, is to take something on. I’ve followed exercise programs and prayer cycles. Frequently I’ve done creative projects with photography or poetry. In fact, my weekly Lection Prayers are an outgrowth of one Lenten season. I simply kept going with them.
This year I set a goal I was not certain I could achieve. I decided to write a song each week of Lent.
Although my repertoire of compositions has expanded greatly over the years, the truth is that I don’t write songs all that often. I was astonished when I counted the songs I’d written in 2021 and came up with a dozen. For me, songwriting requires a good deal more time, concentration, and focus than most other writing projects. I have and do write to deadlines, but I generally prefer to follow some kind of inspiration when it comes to music. I usually am happier with the results.
To set a goal for songwriting which is half my output in the previous year – in six weeks – well. I wasn’t sure I could do it.
I did give myself some space. I did not insist that each song be composed within an assigned week. All I required was that there be six songs by the end of the season. Nor did I impose any subjects or themes on them. The songs would be what they were, and they could fit into the sacred or the secular as it came along. I also knew I’d write one anyway: I’ve made a habit for a few years now of writing something for Easter. Still. Six songs in six weeks?
Friends, I did it. And… all six have now been performed and are available on YouTube.
Wisdom, Feed Us
Premiere performance during the Community Concert of March 11, 2022.
Dream of Peace
Premiere performance during the Community Concert of March 25, 2022.
Come On, Guitar
Premiere performance as A Song from Church of the Holy Cross, March 23, 2022.
Creature of this World
Premiere performance as A Song from Church of the Holy Cross: April 6, 2022.
As We Bring Him Down
Premiere performance during Scripture and Poetry for Good Friday, April 15, 2022.
Walk, Mary, Walk
Premiere performance during What I’m Thinking #259, April 18, 2022.
Then the disciples returned to their homes. But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. – John 20:10-11
Slow down, Mary.
You’ve made the trek three times this morn. Once slowly, drawn reluctantly but certainly to this one place, a garden you would water with your tears.
Slow down, Mary.
The second trip you ran with panicked feet, aghast with loss and injury. What had they done with Jesus? Death by torture – wasn’t that enough?
Slow down, Mary.
You might have beat the fisherman in that footrace, except you’d run the race before already, and the other one? Who could outrun the one that Jesus loved?
Slow down, Mary.
You sought their help. You might have guessed – I’m sure you did – that they’d no help to give. Now, Joseph might have known, and Nicodemus might have helped, but not these two.
Slow down, Mary.
Let them return, uncertain and afraid, until they bring their friends together. You: wait. Take one more look into the empty tomb. Ignore the words of angels.
Slow down, Mary.
If his disciples cannot help, nor angels, sweep your tear-swept eyes across the garden, and see if there is one who says your name, to whom you’d cling until the sunset comes.
A poem/prayer based on John 20:1-18, the Revised Common Lectionary Alternate Gospel Reading for Year C, Easter Sunday (Resurrection of the Lord).
What I’m Thinking is a brief weekly reflection on the upcoming Scriptures – except when it becomes What I’m Singing.
How Could the Story End?
They stepped out in the morning’s shade Bearing the spice mixture that they’d made. How will we roll the stone away? Is a question they don’t need to ask today.
[Chorus]
How could the story end? Grieving/mourning/searching for a cherished friend? No, the story goes on past the closing page: Jesus Christ is risen!
They found that things were not as they had been. The stone was rolled aside and they went in. With startled face they heard the word That Jesus’ resurrection had occurred.
[Chorus]
They left in fright and who could blame them If they kept silent lest the story shame them. But someone told and someone told and so we all know: That Jesus Christ is risen!
[Chorus]
A poem/prayer based on Mark 16:1-8, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year B, Easter Sunday.
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