Story of Flower Communion
Flower communion is a ritual created by Norbert Capek who founded the Unitarian Church in Czechoslovakia. In 1923, Capek was looking for a symbolic ritual that would bring the church together in an affirmation of community. Traditionally Christian churches do this with bread and wine. Many of Capek's parishioners rejected this ritual as a vestige of the Catholicism they had left behind. As Capek looked around one spring day he saw many flowers in bloom. The pastoral beauty of the fields around him gave him the idea to invite people to bring flowers from their gardens and from the roadsides to be shared with each other. Each flower was different but together they made a beautiful bouquet. Each person left with a different flower showing how we learn and grow in each other's company. The first flower communion was a great success and became a yearly event.
The first flower communion in the United States was celebrated in 1940, introduced to the members of the Cambridge, Massachusetts church by Dr. Capek's wife Maja. Two years later Norbert Capek was executed by the Nazis in the Dachau concentration camp. It is fitting as the Christian world remembers its first Martyr, Jesus of Nazareth, so we too remember our martyrs to the liberal faith we cherish. Jesus and Norbert died because they spoke truth to power. The light of their love continues in our communal memory.
Gathering of the Flowers
Homily
When picking a theme for our Easter Service, I was optimistic about how many flowers there might be blooming in our gardens. On the warm days at the beginning of spring with the vernal equinox, I felt more confident and on the cold days I felt doubt. Two Sundays ago in the snow I began to wonder what might happen next! As it's been raining so many days this month, perhaps I should have used the theme of Noah and the Flood. But it all connects since April showers bring May flowers and Easter is pretty close to May.
Thankfully, the snow could not kill off the daffodils and this week saw the blooming of the only flower that grows between your nose and your chin. What flower is this? "Two-lips" of course. (That's my intergenerational joke for today which I got off the web, sent in by six year old Joshua from Vermont.) Look outside. The bushes and the trees are cautiously leafing out signaling the return of green life to our gray winter worn world.
Many were remembering our natural environment yesterday as we celebrated the 30th Earth Day. Since Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin first had the idea for such a day in the summer of 1969, Earth Day has taken off. This year there were an estimated 4,500 organizations planning events in 180 countries; Earth Day has gone global. One of the prime areas of focus this year was global warming which perhaps is bringing the flowers out a little earlier here but also threatens to raise the sea level by melting polar ice caps.
Last weekend, demonstrators in Washington D.C. brought both the environmental and the labor movements to confront the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Globalization has encouraged borrowing by corrupt governments in the developing world who do not responsibly handle the money. When they leave or are forced from office, their gift to the next generation is economically stifling debt. The solution too often forced on these nations is an economic adjustment program that encourages the destruction of their natural and ecological resources for hard currency to repay only the interest on their unwise loans, neglecting the social infrastructure of nutrition, education and health. While the idea of a World Bank and the IMF has merit, their leaders need to reconsider how well they are serving their original goals, to raise the quality and standard of living around the world, helping the world to flower economically.
The oppression of weaker states by more powerful states is nothing new. Our idealism rarely spills over into economics and power politics. Every state must exploit other people, animals or natural resources to elevate their own people's standard of living. Most of us would rather not see it happening and are happy to have our dirty work done by our government, out of our sight.
It seems today, those of us with a social conscience know too much about this process of exploitation. Having access to so much information about so many problems in the world tends to overwhelm us. When hot idealism turns to cold cynicism, there is the temptation to huddle indoors by the fire and turn our attention to matters of the hearth. One can become desensitized by story after story of suffering we can do little to affect.
If we look away though, we can miss the stories that offer hope. Easter is traditionally seen as Jesus' triumph over death. After he was taken down from the cross for dead and laid in a tomb, on the third day his body was missing. Later his disciples thought they saw him again and believed he had been raised from the dead. My favorite story explaining Jesus' return is found at the end of the Gospel of Luke after the discovery of the empty tomb.
Two followers of Jesus were going to a village named Emmaus about seven miles from Jerusalem. As they discussed what had just happened there, a stranger joined them and asked what they were talking about. With great sadness they told the stranger about their great hopes for Jesus' leadership of Israel, his trial and death at the hands of the Romans, and his disappearance from his tomb. The stranger rebuked their grief and began to interpret the scriptures and instruct them about prophecy and the prophets.
When they drew near the village, the two men encouraged the stranger to stay with them. When they sat together and he blessed the bread then broke it, they recognized him and he vanished. They said to each other, ADid not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?
If that really was Jesus the two met on the road, you'd think they'd have recognized him immediately. But it is only when he does the ritual act of blessing the bread that they know him. Jesus' words and actions are the vehicle through which he is known to them and to us. The Romans could kill his body but not his love which lived on in their hearts.
This week also saw the unveiling of the memorial to the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing five years ago on April 19th. 168 chairs, one for each person who lost their life and 19 of them little chairs for the children who died, are part of that memorial. This is also the first anniversary of the Columbine killings at the high school. Those left behind search for reasons and explanations that are often hard to find. The deaths of these random victims of their killer's rage can never be made right or reasonable.
In each of these remembrances, people left flowers. The symbol of the human struggle with death, the way we remember that life continues even though sometimes life is unjustly taken, is to gather flowers together in memory.
Powerful as death is, it cannot extinguish the light of love. That is why Easter is a joyful day. Jesus' love could not be killed. His love lives on and gives us guidance. All the great teachers of the ages whose wisdom we inherit met their end. Yet they live on collectively as a Aspirit of guidance@ that can help the human race evolve and learn to love each other better. This spirit of guidance is freely available, freely passed on to us for our growth toward the good.
So, the spring will come. The flowers will bloom. Wanda will have her rose garden. Life will be once again victorious over death. Yes, there will be more winters. Yes, much trouble lies ahead of us. And each of us must be reconciled to our finitude.
This fragility and resiliency of our existence makes the blooming of the flowers each year all the more precious as the struggle to survive intertwines with such awesome beauty as we have before us this morning.
Through it all weaves the eternal power of love.
Copyright (c)2000 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore. All rights reserved.