A Video Series by the EcoFaith Network, NE MN Synod
Listen with us to the haunting Easter hymn, Now the Green Blade Rises, 
Look with us through the lens of the Jubilee year of Earth Day
 for the green blades rising in and for a wounded creation
Thank you to Paul Jacobsen for the music composition and Dr. Linda Kalweit for the video creation

​*Music Permissions for Now the Green Blade Rises
Tune: Noël Nouvelet (French, 17th c.); arrangement Paul Jacobson
Text: By John MacLeod Campbell Crum, ©1928, Oxford University Press.
Permission for use of text by J.M.C. Crum in "Moments of Arising" Video Series
granted by Oxford University Press & C.F. PetersCorp.
​
​​Promise
Starting with visually stunning images of Lake Superior that accompany a northern Thanksgiving for Baptism, followed by scripture readings and a flute and soprano performance of the first stanza of Now the Green Blade Rises, we hear Nate Anderson from Oak Lake Lutheran Church in rural Kerrick reflect on practicing the resurrection promise in the earthy terms of seasons and seeds. 
​Exploitation
When we use the world as if it were our own,
Planting seed with poison, causing earth to moan,
Earth turns to sand, and ice melts into sea,
Rivers turn to mud, and putrid ponds turn green.
                             Text by Paul Jacobson, tune Noel Novellet
(Now the Green Blade Rises)
 Reflection by Deacon Colleen Bernu
 Slumber
‘Love by hatred slain’
Now the Green Blade Rises
Stanza 3 (stanza 2 of original hymn) 
In the grave they laid Him, love by hatred slain,   Thinking that He never would awake again.   Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen,   Love will come again like wheat arising green.
Love by hatred slain is happening all around us now.  Are we waking up?  
Reflection by Jordan Lutz
Lament
V - Death
When our hearts are wintry, grieving or in pain,
Your warm touch can call us back to life again.
Fields of our hearts, that dead and bare have been,
Long for love to come like wheat arising green.
Now the Green Blade Rises
​Reflection by Dr. Anna Madsen
Now the Green Blade Rises
Come, O great Creator, as in Bethlehem,
To your world, incarnate, bringing hope again.
All creatures sing, “You only can redeem!”
Love shall come again like wheat arising green.
Reflection by Claire Rephsholdt
Come, O Gracious Healer, source of health and life,
May we, too, be healers, we who have caused strife.
              Strengthen our hands to bind the wounds of Earth,
Sharing with the world your promise of rebirth.
Responsibility
Stanza 7, Now the Green Blade Rises
Reflection by Tammy Walhof
Forth He came at Easter, like the risen grain,
Jesus, who for three days in the grave had lain.
Raised from the dead, our risen Lord is seen;
Love is come again like wheat arising green.
 
Stanza 8, Now the Green Blade Rises*