A few years back, when we could more easily do such things, we hosted abby mohaupt and Colleen Earp to our home in Arlington. They were joining Matt Black leading worship at the wee kirk I served here for 16 years or so. Matt played a concert at church the evening before, and in introducing him I said something along the lines of, “in a time of great ugliness, creating beauty is an act of resistance.”
A few weeks later, abby sent us a beautiful piece of art that hangs in our dining room.
I have thought a lot about that this spring, especially as I appreciated the art of a local friend who has created dozens of small images of sunflowers and given them to folks in exchange for donations to Doctors Without Borders. In a time of war, a commitment to nonviolence can feel like nothing, or, perhaps, feel like something as fragile as a sunflower, or something as utterly impractical as a work of art.
On the other hand, consider Holy Week.
The cross seems utterly impractical for anything other than imperial violence, yet God somehow entered the scene of that violence and brought grace to bear as the ultimate expression of resistance to such violence.
When I was a teenager, during the aftermath of Vietnam, I used to doodle my way through worship turning crosses into peace signs. That may have been the beginning of my theological reflecting … or just a way to get through a sermon.
I don’t pretend to understand how God’s grace unfolds in the story we mark this week, but I do attempt to stand under it, as it were. Standing beneath it – beneath the cross, before the tomb, perhaps – I have next to nothing to offer in the face of the violence that is all around us and the ugliness of this moment of war. So I look at the image that abby created, and the images of sunflowers my neighbor created, and offer up a prayer for peace by way of a song that my neighbor’s art inspired.
I’ve posted the song on my YouTube channel along with a pledge to follow Bryan’s lead and make a small donation to Doctors Without Borders and PPF for every time someone likes or shares the video.
It’s my prayer from the garden for Maundy Thursday.
Rev. David Ensign, Interim Executive Director
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