My grandparents always planted their garden on Good Friday. I never asked why. It was just one of those things like the Frigidaire or the chester drawers. I was grown before I realized that it was pronounced “frigid air” and was a brand name, not a synonym for refrigerator. I’ll blame the prevalent Southern drawl for converting “chest of” to chester, but again, it took years to sink into my thick head.  My understanding of the Good Friday planting has arrived more belatedly still. It dawned on me as I was planting my garden this year. As I dropped the seeds into the ground, covered them, patted down the dirt, and wondered how long it would be before they sprouted, the proverbial light bulb snapped on over my head. Of course! The seeds were being buried to rise again. I was proud of myself for figuring this out until it sunk in that it had taken me over half a century to do so. I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed.

When someone asked St. Paul to explain resurrection he said, “We have a parallel experience in gardening. You plant a ‘dead’ seed, and soon there is a flourishing plant. There is no visual likeness between seed and plant. You could never guess what a tomato would look like by looking at a tomato seed…You get a hint at the diversity of resurrection glory by looking at the diversity of bodies not only on earth but in the skies – sun, moon, stars – all these varieties of beauty and brightness. And we’re only looking at pre-resurrection ‘seeds’—who can imagine what the resurrection ‘plants’ will be like?” [from 1 Corinthians 15, The Message translation]

Beyond the seasonal life and death cycle of my plants, there is a daily hint for this mystery as well. Every night I die to consciousness and rise from sleep the next morning.  During a significant portion of my life, I am completely unaware of my own existence. I literally provide a visual aid for resurrection every day. Not to get all new-agey about it, but if there is no context for an answer in our known experience, maybe spiritual awareness is superior to rational arguments when it comes to finding the truth. Who can imagine? What lies beyond may even be superior to homegrown tomatoes and okra. Wow.

The memory bank of most Southerners has a file for Vacation Bible School. Every summer for over half a century, children have spent a week at church playing games, eating cookies, making crafts, singing, and hearing Bible stories. Many of us would attend the one at our own church and then go to another one or two with our friends.  I don’t remember the ones from my youth being major “theme” events like today, but we still had loads of fun. Every year, we kicked off with a parade. We’d decorate cars and trucks and ride around town honking the horns and inviting all the children in the community to VBS.  Then one year during the planning some folks got worried about the parade.

 Did I mention that this was Birmingham, Alabama in the 70s?

Our church, like many other white churches then, had a policy for dealing with black people who attended a worship service with us. There were men assigned to cancel the service and escort the “troublemakers” out. So, you see how the public VBS parade invitation could cause problems. How would we handle it if the wrong people thought they were invited? We would sing about red, and yellow, black and white all being precious in His sight, but that didn’t mean they could come in and eat cookies with us.

The reason this particular VBS changed my life was not because there were troublemakers.  It stands out because of how our pastor, Rev. Jerry Curry, solved the problem.  He announced --- from the pulpit, not in some committee meeting --- that the day our church turned away any child of any color from the Lord’s house, it would be his last day there too.  After the shock wore off, I was so proud of him for making a stand for what was right. It was the day I realized that sometimes churches need to repent just like individuals do.

All this has come back to mind with the recent election of Rev. Fred Luter as the first black president of the Southern Baptist Convention.  It’s interesting that another black minister, Rev. Dwight McKissic authored a resolution in opposition to gay marriage. When asked if he saw similarities in the way gay people are treated now and the way black people were treated then, he said no. His exact words were, “They’re equating their sin with my skin.” I have news for Rev. McKissic. I was never taught that skin was the problem. I was taught that it was a sin for white people to associate with black people. And there are plenty of verses of scripture that can be cherry picked to prove it. I have no idea how the gay marriage issue will eventually play out in churches, but I’ve never forgotten the lesson I learned in VBS --- It’s always risky to pronounce that God doesn’t mind my sins as much as He does yours. 

I love a rummage sale. Recently the Baptist and Methodist churches in Jacksonville collected massive piles of trash and treasure for sale to benefit missions. In the church of my youth, such events were prohibited because of that story about King David where someone offers to provide him a free offering to sacrifice to God. David refuses with the explanation that "I will not give to God that which cost me nothing." My church interpreted this to mean that fund raisers were not to be used for anything that would be given to the church. I accepted this without question at the time, although anyone who has witnessed how much time and effort the church ladies put into organizing all that junk knows that it definitely costs something to pull it off. It stresses me out just to see folks delivering the boxes of stuff they don't want, yet somehow it gets whipped into shape and people show up with money. Who says there are no miracles in church any more?

Besides poking around in other people's discards, I've been reading books about church rummage of a different sort --- Jen Hatmaker's Interrupted and Rob Bell's Velvet Elvis with a little Phyllis Tickle thrown in for lagniappe. All of them examine the general state of dissatisfaction that many Americans are experiencing with organized religion. The idea is that churches have gotten so lost in the rummage of programs and requirements that Jesus wouldn't recognize his own bride. Hatmaker and Bell  addressed the problem by starting their own churches and Tickle is a spokesperson for the Emergent Church movement (or heresy depending on your point of view). No one has ever thought that there could be a perfect local church (except that one in Atlanta near Turner Field), but this is more than a general gee whiz we can do better trend. Lots of new churches are nondenominational and even the ones who aren't are trying to look that way. It's now very common for Baptist churches to leave "Baptist" off when the church is named. Churches are trying to figure out what it means to be relevant. How much change can the church endure and still be Christian? It will be interesting to see if the changes draw people in or push them further away.