Holy Week for the earth

Spring is springing up all around us and the Lenten days are lengthening as we approach a late Easter. This year Easter falls on Earth Day, a lovely coincidence for ecotheologians, and so as we approach Palm Sunday and the pathos of Holy Week, I’d like to invite you to mourn with the earth.
As we walk with Jesus along his road of betrayal, suffering, and death, let us also be present this year to the suffering of Earth and her creatures.

Just as Jesus was betrayed by his community and his friend, and ultimately cried out in anguish that even God had forsaken him, so the creatures of our planet have known betrayal at the hands of the human community. Like a lamb led to the slaughter, like an elephant taken for ivory, like a whale choked by the plastic littering the ocean, if we take time to remember, we know that our suffering is shared in a deep way that encompasses “all flesh” – from our human frailties to the vulnerability of the creatures entrusted to our care. We who walk with Christ on this fragile ledge of life, balancing between life and death, know what it is to fear, to hope, and to suffer pain in our hour of need. The creatures can remind us in wordless ways what that really feels like, at the same time as the plants – especially the flowers, bursting out this time of year – remind us how life still springs from death.

The good news of Holy Week is that we do not walk this narrow way alone. In Christ Jesus we know that God is with us. We do not suffer alone, fear alone, pour out tearful prayers alone, or die alone. Like him we may pray for this cup of suffering to be taken from us. But like him, we also rise. We rise from the ground, from the hospital bed, and even from the grave, where life is breathed again into the dust of death. These powerful metaphors hold us and sustain us through our darkness, and they will carry us into the spring of new life. Join in the lament and the joy of all creation, the songs of mourning and of new rising, sung by all — from lambs and cattle to the creatures of the deep. Walk this road with us, from the noise of Palm Sunday, through the silence of Holy Week, and on into the joyful celebration of Easter.