Chances are that in the last two years you have experienced some disruption in your life or your work because of Supply Chain issues. Easter celebrations have been significantly disrupted in the last two years, but generally these disruptions have not resulted from Supply Chain issues. The shut-down of the Peeps factory in Bethlehem, PA in 2020 - a potentially serious Easter disruption - was the result of pandemic related labor issues, not Supply Chain issues. German chocolatiers, I read, have experienced Supply Chain issues lately, but they still managed to produce 239 million chocolate Easter bunnies this year, according to a trade publication. So, you know, disaster averted! The supplies of candles, communion wafers, and sacramental wine are all flowing pretty much un-perturbed. So we are doing OK in those departments. So, no, the Supply Chain woes that have affected so many lives and businesses have not seemed like much of a threat to the faithful at Easter.
The Supply Chain, of course, is all about getting us the things we want or need. The Supply Chain is in perpetual motion, all over the world, and it needs to be - un-resting, un-stopping, un-impeded - in order to keep commerce and industry going, on which so much depends in our world. As long as the Supply Chain is moving, so is everything else, so I guess that’s a good thing.
It wasn’t until recently that I became aware of the shadow side of the Supply Chain, called, literally the Reverse Supply Chain. I confess that I had given zero thought to what happens to returned or broken or expired products or merchandise when it either fails to reach its end user, or gets sent back from some stop along the Supply Chain. But it’s a whole thing.
I am fascinated by a term that comes from this other side of the Supply Chain, the side that moves in the opposite direction; the term is: “Reverse Logistics.” Reverse Logistics is what happens when something does indeed get to its end user, but then things don’t go according to plan. Either it doesn’t fit, or you decide you don’t want it, or it doesn’t work the way it was supposed to, or something else. Under these circumstances, the perpetual motion machine of the Supply Chain must make provision for a thing - well, many things, actually - to move in the opposite direction. And this process is managed through Reverse Logistics. The shoes you ordered online but didn’t fit become subject to Reverse Logistics. The parts that arrived at the shop but don’t work become subject to Reverse Logistics. The batteries that wear out and need to be replaced are subject to Reverse Logistics.
Am I over simplifying things if I suggest that the aims, goals, and desired outcomes of the Supply Chain are supposed to move in one direction. And a perfect Supply Chain would always move in that one direction. But things don’t always move toward their intended aims, goals, and desired outcomes. And there is a plan for that eventuality: Reverse Logistics. It’s what happens when things move the wrong way.
It is tempting to think of God as an important part of the Supply Chain - a very important player, perhaps, but still just one of many. This tendency springs from a good theological impulse: that God is the giver of all good things. When we see God this way, we see him as the fount and origin of the Supply Chain.
The Israelites saw God this way in the wilderness. They grumbled to Moses: “Why have you taken us away from the Supply Chain, where cucumbers, melons, leeks, and garlic were all delivered when and where we needed them?!?” God was not living up to his responsibilities in the Supply Chain. So what if he had brought them out of slavery!? We often have the exact same expectations of God, who we think should function as the divine manager of the Supply Chain. And we, too, expect God to show up for work and fulfill his duties, to keep stuff coming. God is the giver of all good things, and neither we nor the Israelites are entirely wrong to hold this expectation.
But where in the perpetual motion of the Supply Chain - even a divinely managed Supply Chain - where is there need or desire for Resurrection? What purpose does conquest over sin and death have in the Supply Chain?
If the Supply Chain controls our lives, our hopes, and our expectations, then Resurrection looks, at best, like an upgrade, a way to keep things moving, keep shopping, maybe get deliveries a little faster, as though everything is going just fine, as long as the Supply Chain chugs along. This is the Resurrection as Amazon Prime.
But shouldn’t we expect more from God? Especially since everything is not going just fine, is it? And all of our problems are not the result of Supply Chain woes.
What catalog of misery should I recite for you? When Adam took the apple and ate it; when Cain killed his brother Able; when Noah built the ark; when the construction of the tower of Babel came to an abrupt halt - these stories are preserved to remind us how quickly and how easy things start moving in the wrong direction, in the direction that God did not intend. When David took Bathsheba just because he wanted to; when the rich young ruler could not imagine giving away his things; when nine out of ten lepers forgot to give thanks; when Judas decided he would rather try to be rich than faithful; how quickly things moved in the wrong direction.
When poverty and gunfire that afflict the neighborhoods of this city; when addiction controls and ruins the lives of so many thousands; when depression and suicide steal the promise of the future from so many young people; when greed so divides us that we cannot even see one another from where we live; when warfare rages in places that we have long since forgotten about, let alone the places in the headlines; when the legacy and reality of racism is just ignored by those who could do something about it; when the planet is abused and destroyed by the very people to whose care it was entrusted.
Yes, God has been the giver of so many good gifts in our lives and in this world. But see what we do with what God has given us!
God gives, and God gives, and God gives. And at those times that his giving has seemed scant, he rains down manna, since God’s nature is to give, even in places that are inhospitable to giving. The divine Supply Chain keeps things moving toward the end user, with blessings in mind.
No, everything is not just fine, is it? Everything is not moving in the right direction, is it? And who needs Resurrection if our only aim is to keep the Supply Chain moving in the same direction, to keep everything going the way it’s going, to pretend everything is OK.
What we do need, given the state of things, is some Reverse Logistics: some plan and some action to address the situation in the world when things don’t fit, or we decide we don’t want things to stay the way they are, or when things are just not working the way they are supposed to.
But the Resurrection is not actually just a way to keep things moving in the same old direction. If anything, the Resurrection is the moment of inflection when God, seeing that things are not going as he intended, initiates a program of Reverse Logistics.
Read up a bit on reverse Logistics, and you’ll find there’s a lot to discover. Here’s what some guy who probably has an MBA wrote without knowing he was writing theology: “The goal is to get the broken part back to the point where it can be repaired or reused.” And it gets better: in some cases, the guy with the MBA tells us, “the part can be repaired and hold the same value and be used the same as a brand new part.”* dddThis guy with an MBA thinks he’s writing about Reverse Logistics, but actually, that’s Resurrection! (We should give that guy a Hallelujah!)
So often we tell the story of the Resurrection as though it is something that happened to Jesus, that Jesus did for himself. (Look what I can do!). But actually the Resurrection is something that happens to us! These verses of Luke’s Gospel show us the people who are rushing to the scene: the women with the spices, and then Peter. They cannot tell what’s going on, because things are no longer moving in the direction that assumed things must move. Jesus had died on the Cross, and death leads in only one direction; it’s the tail end of the Supply Chain. But Mary Magdelene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and the other women, and eventually Peter can all sense that something different is happening here - and it’s happening to them! They thought that they were moving in the same direction. They thought that they were moving toward death. They thought they were being given another story of dashed hope to tell, along with all the other stories of failure and disappointment.
They did not know what Reverse Logistics is!
But we know!
God is taking everything that has seemed to move only in one direction: everything that has fed our greed and our selfishness; everything that has pushed us apart from one another; everything that has resisted love; everything that has tended toward darkness; everything that has tended toward war; everything that has tended toward destruction; everything that has tended toward death; and in the Resurrection of Jesus, God has instituted a program of Reverse Logistics, in order to get the broken part back to the point where it can be repaired or reused. Even better, by the power of the Resurrection that part - that person, that life - can and will be repaired so that it holds the same value and can be regarded as a brand new!
That, by God’s grace, is Reverse Logistics, if you ask me. It is precisely what God has in mind for me and for you, and for all his creation. And it’s what God began when he raised Jesus from the dead!
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
Easter Day 2022
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia
from “45 Things You Should Know About Reverse Logistics,” by Steve Syverson, 7 Oct 2021, on WarehouseAnywhere.com
