A SERMON-STORY FOR EASTER The Rev. Brian Backstrand April 20, 14
It was last Sunday. We had a wonderful gathering here at church and moved from the waving of palms to the dramatic reading of the passion narrative. I pointed out that this day was always a difficult day for me because of the sudden movement from praise to suffering and death. We had a nice coffee hour together. We left the church, heading into the week ahead.
It was about three p.m. when Marilee and I went down to feed the cows. By that time, the rain had started. We put on our rain gear and boots and headed down the hill to the place where the cows would be waiting in the rain for their hay. We were half way through the feeding when Marilee pointed out a cow across the creek. She was not coming over to eat but was standing awkwardly and from time to time lying down. She was having a calf and it was my job to go over the check things out.
Across the creek. The wind was up by this time and the rain was beginning to pelt us and the creek was responding. I remember feeling the strong current as I waded across the one place where Gene, the previous owner, had put down gravel to create a ford.
This was the beginning of a six hour ordeal. The cow was 341, called by both of us since August just “Forty-one” She was very friendly and liked to be scratched, but now her labor was in full swing. I made several calls to area farmers and was able to feel one, then both hooves of the unborn calf. Reaching farther in, I would feel the tongue and the nose of the calf. Virgil, our neighbor came over with a cord with which to pull the calf when it was time. I tried to get the cord on both hooves, but was nervous and inexperienced and managed to put both loops on one foot. The cow did not like Virgil’s presence and moved away. She moved away closer to the creek and this presented a second problem—the fast flowing waters were dangerously close, we thought.
The rain increased. The cow went down again and I got both loops in the right place and Virgil came over and together we pulled the calf. It was a big calf and it took a lot of effort to help 41 with this birth, but we did. I wiped the mucus and fluid away from mouth and nose and the calf breathed. It was a big bull calf.
Then we waited for the young mother to react. She began licking and did so repeatedly, but the rain kept the calf wet. I began to worry about hypothermia and remembered a lot of stories about wet Spring weather being worse for newborns than cold Winter weathers—with some exceptions. The calf tried to stand. Finally I helped it to stand, with limited results.
It is important to half a dairy or beef calf nurse within approximately the first hour. We were at the hour mark and then moved well past it. The calf stood and we were encouraged. But the cow refused to let the calf nurse. Again and again it tried as I stood down by the creek to ward off any clumsy movements in that direction. I called Marv, our breeder, who said that yes he thought it was now time to try to bottle feed the calf with colostrum that we had purchased in advance. The calf was really wet and the wind was increasing . Time was racing. Darkness was falling.
Marilee had climbed over the fence a number of times offering assistance. Now she went up to make up the bottle. Up at the barn, she made up the bottle and checked the weather. The wind below was howling and I felt lost, surrounded by darkness, and I began to think that the calf was going to die. Marilee found that the weather conditions were in fact worsening and she came to the conclusion that we were going to have to move the calf into the shed if we were going to save her. The mother cow seemed mildly interested in things, still licking from to time but no nursing.
I got the bottle and tried to feed the calf. It was tough. The mouth would not open. The eyes were half shut. The nose was cold. The calf sucked a little and then quit. On and on it went with perhaps only a pint consumed, if that. The large bottle was mostly full.
I thought about trying to roll the calf under the barbed wire of the fence and knew that that would not work. I thought about trying to carry the calf and knew that carrying the calf 200-300 yards was also not going to work. I thought about the skid steer and putting the calf in the bucket, but we were across the creek and there was no way that we were going to make it through. As the hours passed, the creek rose. The tractor? No. The car, no.
Finally Marilee said We’ve got to get this calf into the shed or we are going to lose her.
I knew she was right. Perhaps Virgil was still around. We drove to Virgil’s but he was not available. Then, in a moment or clarity or a moment or grace or a moment of presence, I thought about the wheel barrow. It was a construction wheel barrow with deep sides.
Up at the barn, we loaded the wheelbarrow into the back of the Subaru and with the door up it worked. We headed down the hill in the blackness. All this started at 3:30 or so. Now it was 9 p.m., the rain was brutal, the wind gusting to 35, the calf wet and slipping away.
I had tried rubbing the calf with towels, but it was no use in the rain. And now those towels were wet. But we had new towels and a blanket or two. We parked near the creek, loaded our gear into the wheel barrow and took our first tentative steps with the barrow to force it across the creek. The current almost swept it away, our flash lights shining in the darkness, but we got it across. The far bank was deep in mud and would have stalled any vehicle. We headed south, Marilee shining the light and me, often blinded by wind and rain, trying to push on through weeds and limbs and grass.
Was the calf still alive? It was. I picked up the calf and together we dumped it in the barrow. Marilee held it down when it tried to rise (not often) and we headed back. I could not tell if the cow was following. It was a long, impossible journey. Finally we came close to the creek ford and knew that this was our hardest test. The waters would be cold. If we dumped the calf, I felt certain that these waters would be the waters of oblivion, the waters of death.
Marilee held the nose of the wheel barrow in the strong current, impressively so, while I pushed through. My feet already were wet from previous crossisngs, but I felt the rocks beneath me. We pulled the barrow up and headed towards the shed. We were half way there. The other cows and calves were in the corral. We opened a side door and brought the calf into the straw covered, dry environment of the shed.
We unloaded. I left to find the cow with my stock stick all that I had to drive her and Marilee stayed on to do her best. She did. She rubbed the calf and she lay on the calf to provide him with necessary body heat. She rubbed and rubbed. The calf lay with its head down but slowly she could feel it warming.
I crossed the creek again and worked my way down to Forty One who had not moved. I began to encourage her and to move her along. She balked at times, but mostly moved in the direction I wanted her to go. I urged her forward and then got tangled up in some down branches and tree trunks. Did the cow double back while I was working my way out of my jam? My flashlight caught nothing behind me but up ahead I some some dim outline. By the time I got to where that outline had been, it was gone. Across the ford of the creek, moving towards the shed, was my cow. Faithfully moving in the right direction. This is not something to be expected. But there she was. Way ahead of me. I crossed the creek.
I called in the howling wind for Marilee to open the gate. The cow went around the corral, but finally entered.
Inside, when the cow entered the shed, the calf’s head came up. Marilee suddenly understood that we had done all that we could. We had got both together in what had seemed truly to be an impossible task. And now that they were together, we were done. It was up to the two of them, young mother and newborn calf, to find a way to get through the blackness of this night.
Trying to save a newborn Hereford bull calf on a rainy black Palm Sunday night might not seem much to you. What is this struggle in comparison with the great tragedies that we encounter or learn of day by day? But for me and for Marilee and for Fortyone and her calf, one week ago it was the world. We had journeyed from the excitement of having calves in nice weather and with little complications to having one calf in the worst of conditions and we were tasting tragedy, exhaustion, loss and the unraveling of our world.
EARLY ON THE FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK WHILE IT WAS STILL DARK, MARY MAGDALENE CAME TO THE TOMB.
Think of the tragedy that they had tasted. Think of the loss, the disarray, the gut-wrenching shock and agony of coming to see the body. Coming to see what had happened to their Lord, their teacher, their Master. While it was still dark they came. and they came to a tomb.
I wonder if they slept. I wonder if they were able to eat. To express shock or feelings. To console one another. They came early, searching.
When we got up in the pre-dawn hours, neither one of us wanted to go down. We knew that there were at best some long odds here. Marilee was supposed to go to work in Beloit, but I knew that I didn’t want to face this alone. What would we find? Marilee agreed to stay on.
That shed—10×20 feet with a slant roof– was for us a tomb. We were sure that it would be a tomb. There were two other calves. We were sure that they would be okay, but what about the third?
By now it was light enough to see. The sky was clearing and the wind had gone down just a couple of hours before. We dressed and jumped into the Subaru to head down.
Where do we look for resurrection, for new life? Our reading from Colossians this morning advises us SET YOUR MINDS ON THINGS THAT ARE ABOVE NOT ON THINGS THAT ARE ON EARTH, FOR YOU HAVE DIED AND YOUR LIFE IS HIDDEN WITH CHRIST IN GOD.
I had mostly been setting my mind on the things of the earth. I had been envisioning a lifeless body tucked into the far corner of the shed. Buried. But to set them on things that are above. Perhaps we should remember that Mary stayed by the tomb. She did not leave. And she was rewarded by seeing a gardener who then revealed himself to her as the risen Lord.
Cynicism is easy. And it is easy to be possessed of a flimsy kind of optimism that sees most if not all things through rose-colored glasses. It is easy to be jaded. It is easy to expect the worse.
We got out of the car. The lane was wet and we would have to walk our way over to the shed and the corral to check things out. The cows were up. I walked ahead trying to look into the far recesses of the shed when Marilee cried out THERE ARE THREE. ONE, TWO, … THERE ARE THREE CALVES!!!
And I looked and there, in the corral and not deep in the shed, was that bull calf, standing upright and firm, standing by his young mother. I ran back towards Marilee and we held one another in a long embrace. He’s alive. And I felt deep within me something profound let go. I am not embarrassed to tell you that I cried in a most profound way, tears flowing, emotions surging. It was the longest and most profound spasm of tears tht I have had in decades. Tears washing me clean. We stood there, surrounded by an Easter miracle.
And so again, where do we look for resurrection? Surely we can begin looking by reading the accounts of resurrection and the appearance narratives in the Bible. But we also need to look in our own lives. We need to touch those places where hope touches us, where God is providing us with important clues of God’s presence.
This experience surely is a small one. But God uses small experiences to communicate and to touch our lives. Today on Easter Sunday 2014 I call these kinds of things little resurrections. Little renewals. Little appearances.
Let us dare to wait — even to wait by the somber places, by tombs like Mary Magdalene—when they appear in our lives, that we also might discover the presence of the living Christ waiting for us there.