Death Tilled the Soil
on energy, waste, and renewal
I read recently that Germany has turned sewage into shipping fuel. Waste—what we flush and forget, the remnants of digestion, the byproduct of being alive—has become a source of energy.
And I can’t stop thinking about it.
Perhaps because today is Good Friday. The day the world turned its face from beauty, the day the Holy was mocked and mutilated. A day when the divine was reduced to blood and breathless silence, discarded like refuse by empire. The air hung thick with sweat and iron, the stench of violence clinging to the wind. A mother crumpled at the feet of her crucified child. Friends stood numb, their throats raw from grief. This was a day of waste—anguish pooled at the foot of a wooden beam, hope buried beneath the weight of empire’s pride. A day that should not have held any promise.
But maybe this is what resurrection smells like before it is beautiful.
What if it begins in the sewage? In the things we call too filthy, too far gone? What if new life doesn’t start with glory but with decay? What if redemption isn’t about escape, but transformation?
Germany’s scientists call it "climate-neutral methanol," produced by capturing biogas from sewage, purifying it, and combining it with green hydrogen to create a clean-burning fuel. The kind that can carry vessels across oceans—waste, now bearing witness to renewal.
But I call it gospel. The kind that tells us the tomb isn’t the end. That even the discarded can be harnessed for life. That what we cast off as waste may yet become fuel. The crucified Christ—abandoned, reviled, buried—becomes the vessel through which all things are being made new. This is not optimism. This is sacred paradox.
But here’s the tension: transformation doesn’t erase trauma. Resurrection doesn’t cancel crucifixion.
I’ve said in the past that Good Friday wasn’t good. The execution of the innocent by imperial powers is never good. And for Sunday to matter, we need to let Friday be what it is.
We don’t rush past the pain of it, the grief of what should have never been. This is how we resist a culture marked by shallow platitudes and spiritual bypassing; a culture that has justified conquest and violence in the name of victory.
And once we sit here—once we name it, weep for it. Once we let the sorrow wash over us; let its reality seep into our bones—then, and only then, can the earth, in all her quiet wisdom, teach us again what the cross already knew: nothing is wasted. Not the ache in your chest. Not the years you thought were lost. Not even the sewage.
And maybe this is the mystery we’re meant to hold today. On this Friday of shadows, we remember: death tilled the soil.
Buried deep in the story of waste is the whisper of renewal. The kind of resurrection that doesn’t deny death. It embraces it. It is transformed by it.