Three years ago, I was delivering my last Easter Sunday reflection. It felt momentous and frustrating. After approximately 24 Easter Sunday reflections and traversing a couple of faith stages, what more could be said? What should be said?
Roger provided a clue. He’d been reading Scientific American and found an article which I may have talked about here already though I can’t find a blog which spells it out, so I hope I am not boring you with repeats.
In this article a lengthy process was described where the perfume from an extinct flower was ‘resurrected’ (That’s the word the scientists used.). It was achieved through an extended collaboration of perfume-makers, botanists and geneticists.
A fragrant hibiscus plant had been ‘discovered’ in Hawaii when European settlers arrived, not not many years later it had become extinct. Small amounts of dried flowers from the plant were in Harvard’s collection.
What ended up happening was that an extremely small fragment of the dried flowers was begged from Harvard. DNA was extracted from it. This DNA was then introduced into a yeast cell in a petrie dish. The yeast cell acted on the instructions in the DNA and reproduced the perfume which could be smelt by the researchers. The ‘extinct’ perfume had been ‘resurrected.’
This is an amazingly bald repetition of the actual events which took longer and were more complicated than this 4 line description.
But I thought of how this eerily lines up with the original Jesus narrative.
Like the hibiscus, Jesus becomes extinct, dead.
The DNA code is extracted from both the flower and from Jesus’ life. In the case of the flower it is a scientific process. In the case of Jesus it is the written down (Bible) and acted out (Christian witness) summary of Jesus’ genetic code of behaviour. It is ‘What Jesus Would Do/Be’, written down, spoken out and acted through.
We are the yeast cells into which this DNA code is introduced. This is the transformative part. Almost beyond our own volition, we start producing a Christ-like life, just as the yeast cell produced the hibiscus fragrance, as we have taken in that Jesus-DNA right into our very beings.
Here is a new expression of the old myth – wearing new clothes from the wisdom of our 21st century scientific traditions, aided by contemporary technologies.
A few posts ago, I suggested Good Friday could be a day when we reflected on suffering, ours and others and look for role models of how to wrestle with our demons. Could Easter Sunday be the day when we celebrate the Jesus-DNA we have implanted in us, working with our own deepest genetic instructions to issue forth into the world the fragrance of true and real love? The day when we celebrate that though the physical male body of Jesus was extinct, his ‘programme’ of love, kindness and compassion lives on like a sweet smelling perfume.
Here’s an Affirmation of Faith from Progressing the Journey which links – it celebrates the use of perfume in that welcoming little home in Bethany just before the events of that first ‘Good’ Friday and Easter Sunday
Affirming the Waste of Perfume on the Fifth Sunday of Lent
Lent 5 Year C
Like drops of perfume, our acts can be small
yet like its fragrance, fill the space around us.
We know even a small act different from expected practice
can expose us to ridicule and shame.
Yet, the fragrance of that offering can also linger
not only for that one night, but through centuries,
sweetening difficult dark moments for others,
far removed in time and space but not in circumstance,
the congruence of the moment creating a bond
with those who also wish to give what seems so little
and yet means so much.
We affirm small offerings.
We affirm brave movements made by frightened people
out of overpowering love.
We affirm courage in all its forms
and gratefully breathe in the fragrance of Love.
And here are the Gathering and Blessing for that Easter Day 3 years ago:
Gathering
Dawn has broken across a dark grieving world
New life is promised, with all the joy that brings.
Light is stealing across the landscape
Love begins to warm each heart.
The sweet-smelling fragrance of love is abroad
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Blessing
May the sweet-smelling fragrance of love
become part of the DNA of our lives
so, inevitably, it is carried from this place
to surround every person, every moment of every day.
Susan Jones, Progressing the Journey (2022)
Go well in these autumnal post-Easter days
Susan
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