The Call of the Cranes

I have wondered from time to time how difficult it would be to celebrate Easter without the accompaniment of Spring. I’m finding out, of course, this year as we experience a very long, cold winter and an extremely early Easter. Even when I lived in Maine, I don’t think we ever had snow the day before Easter as we did here yesterday. But even so, the bulbs are beginning to poke up through the soil; the days are getting noticeably longer; the bunnies and the robins are getting active. Signs of renewal and new life are beginning to be evident in the world around us.

These signs of spring are so much a part of our Easter experience, I find it hard to imagine getting into the Easter spirit without them. Do you ever wonder what Easter is like in the southern hemisphere? What metaphors and images do Christians in Chile or Australia use to try to convey the meaning of Easter? Their world is battening down for winter right now, but still they sing with us this morning: "Jesus Christ is risen today. Alleluia."

All of this is to say that these springtime images are OK metaphors for Easter as far as they go. But they are not Easter. If you cannot imagine Easter without Spring, then you do not really know Easter, you only know Spring.

I don’t think I know of anyone who does not like spring. We look forward to it, especially after an unrelenting winter like this year’s. When I lived further south, it was the blossoms on the dogwood trees that filled my heart with joy in the spring. In Maine, it was a great sea of grape hyacinths I planted in my side yard. Here in the Midwest I love the forsythia by the roadsides and the early crocus and daffodils. These blossoms of spring do awaken in us one part of Easter’s meaning: Easter as new beginning… renewal… reawakening. Like an animal after hibernation, the plants shake off dormancy and resume a life of vitality and growth. And that’s not a bad image for Easter, not bad at all, but…

There really are quite a few "buts" if we start to think of Easter as no more than the first crocus of spring. For one thing bulbs have to be planted. Somebody planted them. And, in general, the bulbs that bloom are the varieties that you picked out and they come up in the location where you planted them. In general. Easter, in contrast, is beyond any human initiative or control. We cannot claim any part in creating Easter’s wonder.

Spring and its blossoms are predictable and recurring. We may not know exactly when spring will come, but we know it will, and we know more or less the course it will take. It’s pretty much the same every year. On the other hand, think of that first Easter. No one could have begun to predict or even imagine what Easter would be or mean for human lives then or now. Nothing like the empty tomb had ever happened before.

And finally, of course, bulbs fade and dry up, especially the early spring ones. Summer always follows spring. Summer has its own appeal, but it signals the end of spring. Easter’s resurrection glory is undiminished for all eternity.

As a metaphor, the flowers of early spring hint at Easter, but they convey only a pale shadow of Easter’s real meaning. But I do have another springtime experience to share, and though it too ultimately falls short, for me it comes closer to expressing the holy wonder of Easter resurrection.

Thursday I heard the cranes. I heard the sand hill cranes high, high in the sky. You may remember it was briefly sunny and warmer midday on Thursday. And as I walked out in the backyard to come over to the church to check on Maundy Thursday preparations, my mind full of a thousand things, I heard the cranes. I still remember vividly the first time I ever heard them a few years ago after I moved here. We are right in a migration flyway from Florida to Wisconsin and Michigan. They are remarkable birds and they have the most wonderful call. (For those of you who don’t know them, a crane is about as different from a Canada goose as two birds can be, except that they both migrate. Canada geese honk, for heaven’s sake, and fly through the air with the grace of a winged school bus.) Cranes have majesty and grace. And their call… It sounds a bit like the happiest gurgling of a young baby. But the baby’s joy drifts down out of the sky. Or maybe it’s more like the gentle babbling of an alpine stream flowing over rocks. But the sound of that Montana stream sweeps through the air on an Illinois afternoon. Or one description I read described the call of cranes as rolling trumpets. Pure, melodious trumpets rolling through the heavens. Or maybe the call of the cranes is the sound of angels' laughter drifting down from heaven to earth.

And for me, part of what makes this an Easter experience is that the sound of the cranes is always unexpected and certainly undeserved or unearned. It is a gift of joy and grace that surprises me, literally out of the blue. I do not, can not, summon them; they just appear, coming from beyond my world. I can claim no role in the grace and beauty they bring. And, although there is some routine or predictability in their passage through this way every spring and fall (so maybe I can imagine Easter in the fall), it always seems a miracle when I happen to be outside at just the time they are passing overhead. And to see them as well as hear them is a second miracle. The migrating flocks sometimes fly higher than the human eye can see. Imagine that! Something wondrous that exists beyond the range of human sight. They are large birds, with a five to six foot wingspan. Thursday I saw a flock of probably 40 or 50, flying in line… not in a "V"… but more of a graceful wave, and so high they looked like a fine thread rolling and dancing in the wind.

The cranes break open my world with a glory and grace that comes from beyond, bringing a freedom and joy to my heart that I could never find or acquire on my own. The sound of a baby gurgling or an angel laughing coming from the sky is a gift beyond any normal occurrence in my life, and I feel, for a moment, that I share in something much bigger than myself, something holy.

In the end, of course, the cranes and their wondrous voices are an incomplete metaphor, too, for Easter. They are just birds. And they pass on their way. If they stayed, a good bit of the wonder would fade, I suppose. And God’s gift of Easter does not drift away with the wind. But think of the cranes, and consider in your life where and when the Easter moments come. There are many things beyond the flowers of spring that offer us glimpses into the holy. That literally break our lives open so that heaven can fly in.

But as wonderful as all of these experiences, images and metaphors may be, none of them is the real thing. They get us close, they point us in the right direction, but they are not Easter. That’s important to remember. But perhaps they awaken in us a desire, a yearning, a seeking for Easter resurrection. And then… if you find yourself yearning for resurrection… resurrection!… then I have one suggestion:  talk to a new Christian. A new Christian. A child… they walk hand in hand with the risen Christ. Or an adult convert. A new Christian. In the early church, Easter was the time when adult converts "rose from the dead" and were baptized as Christians. It still happens. Ellen Charry teaches systematic theology at Princeton. She was found by Christ as an adult. She speaks of the freedom, the thankfulness and the holy empowerment that percolate through every moment of resurrection life… she speaks of being "glued to the maker of heaven and earth" ("Sacraments for the Christian Life", The Christian Century, November 15, 1995).  If you seek Easter’s resurrection in your life, ask a new Christian, young or old. They live resurrection life, and it would be a deep joy to share it with you.