Resurrection Sunday: Let Him Easter in Us

For a week or so I’ve been drawn to the Gerard Manley Hopkins line, “Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness in us.” I’m reconsidering its meaning this year.

I first saw the line in a Catholic bookstore at an Iowa retreat center 20 years ago. Hopkins’ words were incorporated into the mission statement of a female religious order in the Midwest, and one of the Sisters of the order had painted the line in watercolor, beautifully depicting the phrase in a way that caught my eye. I’ve kept the framed work in a place where I can see it almost daily since that time.

All these years, I’ve been moved by the novelty of Hopkins’ use of “easter” as a verb, an action word. Again this Holy Week, I’ve played around with what “let him easter in us” might mean. At the moment, I only have hints and guesses. For now, I’m exploring.

A couple of days ago, I randomly connected Hopkins’ line with a familiar verse from Mary Oliver. Surely to “let him easter in us” has something to do with life and vibrancy.

The Mary Oliver question which came to mind in my pondering simply asks: “Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?”

The line comes squarely in the center of her lengthy, “Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches,” a poem which invites us to a more vibrant, alive existence by getting out of our self-focus and into the lives of things around us: The long branches of young locust trees in early summer, or the sea, or the grass.

She writes:

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!

And then:

For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!

It has occurred to me this week that “breathing just a little and calling it a life” is not the same as letting him easter in us.


Further, this week I am holding the tension of reconciliation as I ponder “let him easter in us.” Paul wrote in 2 Cor. 5 that this was Christ’s work in the world, reconciling the world. I assume this work continues in an even greater way post-Resurrection. Christ eastering in us and in the world surely has something to do with reconciliation, making right the divisions and factions that exist within us, among us, and in the world.

Reconciliation is making right, making peace. The dictionary definition says “to restore to friendship or harmony,” so it includes a work of restoration.

Many times I am like the political leaders who urge oneness and harmony among partisans, but who really mean, “There will only be oneness and harmony if you come to my position on this issue, if you see things my way, if you adopt my value system.” This is a sham of harmony and has nothing to do with reconciliation.

Authentic reconciliation stands in the center and holds all the sides, all the partisans, all the variances together. Again, Paul said that in Christ, there is no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no rich or poor, no slave or free, but all are one in Christ. So it sounds like, when I take one position or another – and believe me, I definitely have my firmly-held positions!! – I’m in no place to reconcile. If I am in one position or another, dug in, I’m no longer able to reconcile, to bring together. I may be entrenched, but not in a place of restoring friendship and harmony.

From that place, people in the “opposing camp” become “elites” or “snowflakes,” or they become “a basket of deplorables.” Reconciliation cannot happen there.

It seems to me that reconciliation somehow holds both (or all) the extremes together, in order to work toward healing and oneness. This is strenuous work, and requires that we get outside of ourselves, that we take on a new mind, that our lives are oriented as “the mind of Christ.”

It is a bogus oneness to say that we all need to come together as one nation or one denomination or one whatever, while advocating that everyone needs to agree with me . . . that only if others come to my position can there be oneness. This is a pseudo-oneness, a sham of reconciliation.

To reconcile is to make peace, to live into a wholeness which transcends one position or another position. To make peace – shalom – brings completeness . . . making peace and restoring friendship with God . . . making peace among the scattered parts of ourselves, befriending our own lives again . . . making peace with others, especially those with whom we disagree.

Are some causes unjust? Certainly!

Are other causes worth fighting for? Definitely!

But in every case, we are invited to follow Christ, whose work was reconciling the world to God . . . to be reconcilers, to make peace, to listen to the other, to treat the other with respect and friendship, to work toward shalom . . . the invitation stands for those who are post-Resurrection disciples.

Let him easter in us. At some level, at least in my thinking today, Christ eastering in us means we join him in his work of reconciling the world.

You're Not in Control

Luke 5:1-11

One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, the people were crowding around him and listening to the word of God. 2 He saw at the water’s edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets. 3 He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore. Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat.

4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.”

5 Simon answered, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.”

6 When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. 7 So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink.

8 When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” 9 For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, 10 and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon’s partners.

Then Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will fish for people.” 11 So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.


"Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man." Peter was right, of course. He was a "sinful man," in whatever way you choose to measure human sinfulness. In that sense, he was no different from me or you.

But coming as it does in this part of the narrative, I don't sense that Peter was sharing new information with Jesus about the level of his morality. Nor was Peter reminding Jesus of something he felt Jesus already knew.

Peter's objection is rooted in a much deeper sense of self and in his own theological assumptions about himself and God. His statement gives us a hint about how he sees himself, and how he perceives God working in the world.

[Foreshadowing: The way Peter believes God works in a human life is also the default system many of us carry within ourselves.]

While there are several significant angles within this story of the great catch of fish, I'm drawn to one in particular today. In the narrative, God is depicted as generous, even extravagant. After a full night of fishing in which these professional fishers caught nothing, Jesus instructed them to try again. What changed? Was there a shift in the wind? A change in the barometric pressure? What happened?

[My grandfather had a sixth-grade education, but was the best fisher I ever knew. He could barely read a book, but from a boat on the lake or with a rod and reel in hand on the shore, he could read the weather -- and thus the fish -- with uncanny accuracy. If we were sitting in his living room and said, "Let's go fishing, Granddad!" he would walk out to the porch, stand there for a couple of minutes watching the skies, feeling the air on his skin, and either say, "Okay, it's a good day for fishing," or "They're not biting today . . . we'll go another day."]

What changed that day on Gennesaret Lake? What did Jesus know that these professional fishers did not know?

"Put down your nets again," Jesus instructed, and what came up in the nets were so many fish the nets began to tear. Abundance . . . extravagance . . . taking the little and making it more than enough . . . these are familiar themes echoed throughout God's story in scripture, especially as embodied in Jesus.

But Peter is accustomed to a finite world . . . a world in which we have been taught that we get what we deserve. Thus, as "sinners," we deserve very little. To Peter, the scene doesn't add up. He had done nothing to earn or deserve this massive catch of fish. And he has not been sufficiently versed in God's generosity. So he objects. He has lived inside a pattern that has created dichotomies all his life: deserving/undeserving . . . worthy/unworthy . . . one or the other. By the tone of the narrative, Peter is not ready for Jesus to break open the worthiness pattern under which he has ordered his life.

"Go away from me," he says. I"m not ready for a shift like this. I'm accustomed to being the center of my world. When things, good things, come my way, it's because I've worked for them, earned them, shown myself worthy of them. I'm a sinful man. I will not accept unearned gifts!

[Have you ever received some good gift, something you did not deserve, or some accolade for which you felt unworthy, and then countered that good gift by engaging in some kind of self-destructive behavior? I have, and you probably have, too. It is one subconscious way we say with our lives, "I'm a sinful person! I'm not deserving!" Perhaps we pick a fight with a spouse . . . or engage in some addictive behavior . . . or intentionally create a stir at work . . . all the dynamic equivalent of Peter's pushback, "Get away from me! I am unworthy!"]

How impoverished Peter is! How impoverished we are! Ordering life as if everything depends on me -- my skill, my intellect, my ingenuity, my creativity, my work ethic -- I shut out the possibility of gift, generosity, grace. In that sense, I am not only impoverished, but stunted in my capacity to receive from God and others anything that comes apart from my own making.

We live in God's world, thankfully, in which we do NOT always get what we deserve -- either for good or for bad -- and in which we are not in charge -- despite our feverish efforts at controlling the world.

The worthiness game is a true dead-end, despite how deeply ingrained it is within us and within culture. Ultimately, it shuts you off from God and others, making life all about yourself, your efforts, your own will. There is little future in that, either for me, for you, or for the human community.

So here you go . . . here's your huge catch of fish!!

Rhythms for Receiving and Spending

"Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
(Lk. 6:38)


A huge crowd took a meal that began with five loaves of bread and two fish. After everyone had eaten there were twelve baskets of food leftover. (Matt. 14:13 – 21)

What do you do with the leftovers? How do you handle the excess? I have to go off-script a bit, because the text doesn’t say what happened in this instance. I think there are realities, though, offered by Jesus in other places, that give me some indication of what might have been next.

As you think about the leftovers, the excess, here is something you might want to consider:

There is no such thing as excess or having too much . . . if your life is a conduit through which what you have is shared with others.

Just to be clear, that’s the Gospel according to Jerry, not Jesus. But I still think it holds true. Maybe you can help me test it out.

However much you have in your hands, whatever it is, whether plenty or poverty . . . when your life is a vessel that conduits what you have to others, there is no such thing as excess or having too much.

For me, the symbol of open hands (and open heart) is a key. Open hands suggest that we are ready to receive, that we have let go of enough of what we think and how we are in order to receive what God is ready to give us.

The Christian mystic from centuries back (I think it was Meister Eckhart, but it may have been John of the Cross) said, “God is always waiting to give good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive them.”

With open hands we release what we hold onto in order to receive what God wants to give. So with open hands we receive.

Too often, though, as soon as we receive, we close our hands. “Okay, now that I have this, it is mine!” We tend to be a clutching, grasping, hoarding, collecting people, and a part of the human condition is that we hold on for dear life to what we think is ours. We acquire and accumulate. We gather to ourselves and hold. It is a significant piece of our human dysfunction.

However, the open hands image does not apply only to the receiving. It also speaks to the other end of the conduit. The same open hands that receive from God then turn outward to give or share with others. Open hands are also the image for giving away what we have, spending it on the world for God’s sake. Whether the excess that we have is money or time or energy or wisdom, the invitation is to receive, then to let go.

In that context, then, there is no such thing as “excess” or having too much, because whatever we have received we then spend on the world.

This is the basic movement of Centering Prayer as a contemplative prayer form. It is a prayer in which we practice this movement of receiving, then letting go.

Thoughts come . . . I receive them, then let them go.
Ideas come . . . I receive them, then let them go.
Noises come . . . I receive them, then let them go.

We welcome whatever comes, then release it. I may have a little . . . still, I receive and then let go. I may have a lot . . . I receive, then let go.

This, then, is the cycle, the movement, the process of life, so that we are always taking into ourselves and then spending it on the world. The wonderful truth is that we may never be more God-like than when we fall into this life-flow, for this is exactly what God is doing endlessly and in extravagance. God generously and with abundance throws God’s Self out into the world, and in doing so is never depleted, never exhausted. In all this Self-giving, God never comes to the end of who God Is.

I think in the same way, when humans spend themselves for God’s sake, there is an endless supply. God continually replenishes what we have to give. But as soon as I close my hands, as soon as I keep what I’ve received as if it were only for myself, I shut down the cycle.

Which leads me back to Matthew’s story of the leftovers . . . and here I have to listen to my imagination. What happened to those leftovers? Did some people take a loaf for themselves out of one of the baskets? Did others take a loaf to share with someone else who was hungry? Were there some who took home several loaves in hopes of having “daily bread” for the next week?

Here’s the other maxim that came to me a few days ago. Try this one out:

"Today’s leftovers become the seed for the next miracle.

Do you see? I wonder if one or five or seven of these loaves became the seed for a miracle the next day – not reported in the Gospels – in which Jesus took these leftovers and created another huge meal to feed a massive crowd. But for today’s leftovers to become tomorrow’s miracle, someone not only has to receive the leftovers today, but share them tomorrow.

Abundance and Poverty

When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns. When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.

As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.”

Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”

“We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered.

“Bring them here to me,” he said. And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children. (Matt. 14:13 - 21)


This seems to be the prototypical response of Jesus-followers to the hunger of the world. They wanted to send the people away to be fed elsewhere, as if the Source of Life could be sought and bought in some market of the world.

Honestly, it is the way most of us do our lives with God . . . a kind of spiritual capitalism which imagines that whatever we need, we can "go and buy." How common it is among Christians to believe that buying the right book or attending the right conference or taking in worship of a particular style will attain for them the life with God they have imagined. It's all very consumeristic . . . we are products of our consumptive culture.

Jesus, on the other hand, was completely in touch with the Source of living water, with the Bread of full life. He saw and knew what others struggled to see and know. He recognized that the disciples had something to feed the hungry people because of their connection to him. He saw and trusted in them more than they saw and trusted in themselves.

When I read this story, I think about what the disciples have that they hadn't yet realized. And that leads me to think about what I have, what I hold, what resides within me that I have to offer others.

"You give them something to eat." How do I hear that? It's something like God asking Moses, "What is that in your hand?" What am I holding that might be shared with others who are hungry?

When I considered this passage last week, I thought of it in terms of abundance and poverty. Let me explain.

There are some things that I have in abundance, that is, I feel like I have a lot of it. I’m not talking about material things or possessions that I have . . . I have a lot of those, too. I’m talking about characteristics or traits of the Spirit within me, things I have in abundance as a part of the life I share with Christ. All of us have a different set of attributes, though often they are difficult to name and acknowledge. To say that I have an abundance of faithfulness in friendships, or a lot of vision and discernment, or an abundance of a prophetic spirit is not to be inflated or egotistical. Rather, it is to say that these are things God may use to feed other people.

At the same time there are things I have in abundance that are dangerous and could be poison to the world if left untended. To say that I have an abundance of greed or anger or fear may be true, and these attributes in abundance can be detrimental to the world in which I live.

As abundance speaks to what I seem to have a lot of, so the word “poverty” speaks to me of that which I have little of. In some cases, having little of something is healthy and leads to more life: egotism, manipulation, trying to control others . . . poverty is the position from which we most often find God, from the recognition of our lack.

There may also be things I lack that it would be really good to have. To be relationally impoverished, for example, or to lack a healthy view of the motives of others may be expressions of poverty that lead to difficulty in life.

So you can see that there are nuances to poverty, just as there is a wide spectrum of ways we can have an abundance.

For me, the crucial awareness is that I live with feet in both worlds. Abundance and poverty live within me, so I'm not either/or. There are some things I have a lot of and there are other places in which my life is poor. That is not a statement of judgment. It’s a statement of reality, an honest statement of fact.

To pretend that I am only my abundance (over-inflation and egotism) or that I am only my poverty (a different kind of egotism – “nobody is as bad as I am” – and false-humility) is an illusion. I am both.

Culturally, we leave little room for both abundance and poverty. We speak a lot about ascendancy, about getting better and making progress and being number 1! We don’t leave much room for abundance and poverty, for honest assessments of who we are. Excess is valued. Scarcity is not. The motto by which Western culture seems to live is: “If a little bit is good, a lot is better.”

The Church has adopted a theology of abundance as well. Our songs are about the poor becoming rich and the blind seeing. We communicate the message – not so subtly – that if you’re not moving toward abundance and having a lot, then something must be wrong with your faith.

In both the Hebrew Scriptures and in Jesus, though, there is blessing for the poor, for those who recognize their poverty, for those who live in both physical poverty and in poverty of spirit.

So I find it crucial to name, to acknowledge what I have in abundance and where I am poor . . . and to do so without feeling as if I have to make a choice between the two. I am not asked to live in one or the other, but to live in both my gain and my lack.

For me, the huge first step is recognition. Both abundance and poverty are a part of me, but neither one is all of me. I am invited to recognize them, to name them, and then to find who I am – while holding both my abundance and my poverty – with God.

You may see my abundance and my poverty much more clearly than I do. You can probably name them much more quickly than I can. In the end, though, I don’t get my personhood from you, nor do you get your personhood from me.

In the end, who I am with God is what really counts.