Easter: a season of renewal

By John Hamer, Director of Outreach and Innovation

“Now the Green Blade Rises” is probably my favourite hymn in Community of Christ Sings (#482). Beginning its life as a 15th-century French Christmas carol (Noël Nouvelet), the tune was given new lyrics in the early 20th century by Anglican canon J. M. C. Crum, who transformed it into a celebration of Easter.

The lyrics connect the sacred story of Christ’s resurrection to the annual cycle of the seasons, and to the renewal of plant life we experience each year at Easter with the coming of spring:

Forth he came at Easter,
    like the risen grain,
he that for three days
    in the grave had lain;
raised from the dead,
    my living Lord is seen;
Love is come again
    like wheat arising green.

The analogy of the life cycle of plants to Christ’s resurrection goes back to the very beginning of our tradition. The Apostle Paul writes: “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain… So it is with the resurrection of the dead... The body that is sown is perishable; it is raised imperishable… it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:36–37, 42, 44). The idea of resurrection and Easter, then, involves a complete transformation: a spiritual rebirth that follows the death of the material.

In our daily lives, we easily get caught up in the material concerns of the present. The chaos of current global events alone has reduced the timeframe of the 24-hour news cycle to the perpetual, instantaneous cycle of social media on our phones. A hymn like “Now the Green Blade Rises,” and words like Paul’s, help me to step back and connect to something larger: the annual cycle of life. And once we step back to contemplate and celebrate spring, we are on the path to step further back to consider ever larger cycles, like the human generational cycle we all experience.

As we live our lives within the church, we are connected to a cycle that is still larger: the life of our congregations and the church itself. Many of our congregations in Canada are more than a century old, making us heirs to something much larger than ourselves. Nevertheless, even if they are much longer than the human life cycle, congregations have life cycles of their own. As trends have shifted in North America over the past half century, most of us have been experiencing life in congregations closer to the end of their cycle than the beginning. We are hardly alone; most of Canada’s churches are experiencing significant declines in membership. Some of us have begun to wonder if younger generations will even be interested in “church” in the future.

I have actively focused on this question for decades, and for the last ten years outreach and invitation have been my life’s focus. At the beginning, we resolved to operate entirely outside the box. If Canada’s next, diverse generation was uninterested in “church,” perhaps we could translate our mission and our enduring principles into forms that would better resonate. From this period of experimentation, we learned much about effective ways to invite new people into community.

Along the way, we also discovered something we did not expect: many young people are, in fact, quite interested in our sacred inheritance as Christians when we approach our distinctives in ways that are authentic and open. We learned this lesson through our Tuesday night lecture ministries, which began ten years ago as an outreach experiment. We started with a wide net, sharing across a broad range of topics in history, theology, and philosophy. Over time, we discovered that the most popular topics ended up being about Christianity: Bible study, Christian history, and theological questions.

Last week, our Centre Place YouTube channel crossed a milestone of over 90,000 subscribers—an unprecedented number. As that community has grown, large numbers of seekers have been drawn to the non-dogmatic, inclusive, and authentic way we express Christianity in Community of Christ. Each week, as more people become regular participants in Beyond the Walls services, a sense of identity with our sacred community grows, leading now to requests for formal membership.

When we began to plant seeds a decade ago, we had no conception of the crop that would arise. The many new expressions the church will take in the future have not yet fully taken form. But as someone who cares deeply for the body—its roots, heritage, and legacy—I am heartened. We are now experiencing the first fruits of a season of renewal. Remember, then, as the hymn assures us:

When our hearts are wint’ry,
    grieving, or in pain,
your touch can call us
    back to life again,
fields of our hearts
    that dead and bare have been;
Love is come again
    like wheat arising green.

Now the Green Blade Rises