Holy Farming Week in a Pandemic by abby mohaupt

For at least the last six weeks, people around the United States have been sheltering in place. And for longer, people around the world have had their lives upended. It’s an extraordinary time to be alive, trying to live in a different way that allows for more people to live. I have the extraordinary privilege to live on a 149-acre farm in this time when we must stay home; a farm that offers space to wander and wonder; a farm with other people and creatures. It’s a place of paradise during this pandemic time.

In the days before Holy Week, it occurred to me (as it did to so many others) that this Holy Week would be different than any I had lived through before. How would we faithfully live into our lives on the farm as people of God?

We let our hours and days be measured by prayer, and we leaned into the even more strange time of Holy Week.

On Palm Sunday, we gathered around the computer and worshiped with several congregations through Zoom, Facebook Live, and YouTube. We reflected on the triumphant and jubilant parade of elementary school teachers who had recently followed the school bus routes through and around town to greet their students and to remind the town that we are, each of us, loved. Much like Jesus’ unexpectedly humble arrival into Jerusalem on a donkey, the teachers’ caravan (a surprise to those of us without children) felt like a break in of God’s love through the rearrangement of the ordinary (people in vehicles) into something extraordinary.

We woke up every morning during the week and flowed into our usual, ordinary routine: get the newspaper, let the chickens out and feed them, gather together to read and do the crossword. Sometimes we made breakfast first or sat on a porch. But at the same time every morning, one of us pulled out the hymnals and Bible and led us in a short devotion. We marveled at how the sun rose, and we prayed for a Holy Week that would help us draw closer to God, even as we further isolated ourselves from the world.

On my trips into town to do the essential grocery shopping and mail pickup that week, I practiced the song I would sing on Good Friday. The words are based on a prayer found in a concentration camp put to a tune by Mark Miller, a colleague and professor at the University where my farmmates and I met and the musician from one of the churches we had worshiped with online.

I believe in the sun even when it’s not shining.

            I believe in love even when I don’t feel it.

            I believe in God even when God is silent.

Repeating the words, rehearsing the timing and phrasing, increasingly more comfortable with the volume and muscle control needed, I wondered just how my car had become my rehearsal space.

On Thursday, our new kayak arrived, and I couldn’t bear to go to church online. Instead I took my shoes off and paddled across the pond, washing my feet in the cool water as the sun moved below the treeline. How could we live out the mandate to love one another in this new world where we had to stay six feet apart or more from each other? How could I tell the people I love that I do love them? What acts of service did I need to take on, following Christ’s footwashing of those he loved?

Friday came and I struggled to pay attention at work. The nearness of suffering – usually just read about in the Gospels but this year in the newspapers and endless online articles – made work feel irrelevant. I closed my computer in the minutes before 3pm. I am not a biblical literalist, and yet I feel irreverent and blasphemous working in the hours when Jesus is no longer alive.

In the evening, I went into the church building for the first time in over a month. Our friend who is the pastor there was in the pulpit, one tech guy was in a pew, and the youth director stood at the front of the sanctuary. The rest of the space was empty, haunted by people who would have been there any other year. We kept our distance from each other, as we practiced the stripping of the sanctuary. And the Facebook Live began, and we prayed and sang and cried together over the death of our Lord.

We left the church in silence. Alone.

On Saturday, I made peanut butter cookies, egg casserole, hardboiled eggs (to decorate), and hot-cross buns… while one farmmate made lamb cake and another farmmate worked around the farm. It was a day of preparation, a day that felt like any other ordinary Easter Saturday. It felt like an echo of what the first day-after-Good-Friday may have felt like; the ones who loved Jesus did not know what to do with their grief. So, they made food. They took care of their home. They took care of each other.

I walked the mile and a half to a neighbor’s house to pick up bread she left on her front porch. We enacted a modified Easter vigil, moving from eggmobile to porch to hill to pond. We remembered our baptisms, laughing in surprise at the everlasting promise of God’s claim on our lives.

We woke up the next morning to the sound of rain on the roof. Sleepy-eyed, we read the words from the Gospel of John:

¹¹ Mary stood outside near the tomb, crying. As she cried, she bent down to look into the tomb. ¹² She saw two angels dressed in white, seated where the body of Jesus had been, one at the head and one at the foot. ¹³ The angels asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”

She replied, “They have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they’ve put him.” ¹⁴ As soon as she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she didn’t know it was Jesus.

¹⁵ Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who are you looking for?”

Thinking he was the gardener, she replied, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him and I will get him.”

¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabbouni” (which means Teacher).

¹⁷ Jesus said to her, “Don’t hold on to me, for I haven’t yet gone up to my Father. Go to my brothers and sisters and tell them, ‘I’m going up to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

¹⁸ Mary Magdalene left and announced to the disciples, “I’ve seen the Lord.” Then she told them what he said to her.” (John 20:11-18).

And in those wee hours, we celebrated the extraordinary promise of life in an extraordinary time. In these days before Pentecost, we continue to seek Jesus, to mourn those who are dying, and to care for this piece of the planet.

Somehow we will make the church anew; she is already being born in us, and in you.

 

abby mohaupt is one of the farmers at Sister Grove Farm in Van Alstyne, TX. abby’s heart work is devoted to living with integrity at the intersections of eco-feminisms, social justice, and spirituality. She is an ordained clergy person in the Presbyterian Church (USA), moderator of Fossil Free PCUSA, adjunct faculty at McCormick Theological Seminary, Director of Education and Training at GreenFaith, and PhD student at Drew University.