First Parish Unitarian UniversalistThe Easter Story — Time for All Ages
By Reverend Diane Teichert
First Parish Unitarian Universalist - Canton
Easter Sunday 2005
You know what holiday is today, right? It’s Easter.
Who knows, raise your hand, who celebrates Easter? Is it celebrated by Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus or…??
Right, Easter is celebrated by Christians. And their religion is called what? Christianity.
Unitarianism and Universalism both started out as Christian religions. Today among Unitarian Universalists, we have some people who are Christians and some people who aren’t. Probably even more of us UU’s are people who try to follow the teachings of the man Jesus but don’t follow all the other teachings of the Christian Church.
I’ve talked with you before about some of the teachings of Jesus, and I will again at the end of this Time for All Ages. But, first and mainly, today I want to tell you about the Easter story, from the Bible.
Like the Christmas story about the birth of Jesus or the Passover story in Judaism or the story of how Muhammad received the Qur’an in Islam, the Easter story is a story that has truths in it, even if it isn’t entirely, exactly factual.
Does anyone know what book you would read if you wanted to read the Easter story?
The Bible. And where in the Bible would you look? You would look in the Christian scriptures, often called the New Testament because it is not as old as the Jewish scriptures.
The Bible is actually more like a library than a book, because it has in it a collection of books. In the New Testament, there are four books (one called Matthew, another Mark, Luke and then John) that tell the Easter story, each tells a somewhat different version of that story.
But, here’s the general idea. First, though, you have to know who Jesus was.
Two thousand years ago, a man named Jesus had been a rabble-rousing Jewish teacher and leader. His talks in the temple, and speeches to crowds of people on hillsides and fields, and his apparent ability to heal sick people had attracted a lot of attention. Some of the attention was good: he accepted all kinds of people among his followers and they tried to live good lives. Some of it was bad: other leaders in Judaism and the political leaders at that time, the Romans, were worried that Jesus and his followers might take over and they would lose their power.
So, Jesus was captured, he was given a fake kind of trial and put to death in a gruesome way that was common punishment back then, called crucifixion. He was nailed to a cross made of two pieces of wood and left to die.
The Easter story starts after Jesus was dead. One of his followers was allowed to take the body of Jesus from the cross and prepare it for a traditional Jewish burial. They lovingly wrapped his body in white linen, kind of like this, with a special mixture of plants called myrrh and aloe that smelled good and were common in Israel where they lived. And they put his body in a tomb. The tomb wasn’t a grave that’s dug in the ground like we usually think of. This tomb was more like a cave cut into a hillside, where a number of bodies could be laid, and a big stone could be rolled in front of the entrance to keep animals and grave robbers out.
They rolled the stone in front of the entry to the tomb and left. Do you know what the story says happened in the morning?
I’ll read it to you from the version told in the book called Mark in the Christian Scriptures in the Bible.
And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they (some of Jesus’ friends and followers) went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” Whey they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him.” But the spot was empty. His body wasn’t there.
The Easter story says, “He has been raised from the dead.” That’s what the Easter word “resurrection” means. His followers believed that he had come back to life. It was a miracle. In the Easter story it says that some of them even saw Jesus after his death, walking with them, eating with them, talking with them. They said that he told them he “would come again.” Then he vanished.
Christians have been waiting and hoping ever since for Jesus to come, to live, again. That’s what Christians mean when they talk about a Second Coming, it’s Jesus coming to life again. That’s what they are hoping for.
So, Easter is a joyous and hope-filled holiday for Christians. It’s joyous because Christians believe Jesus did not really die. It’s joyous because Christians believe that they won’t die, either. And it’s full of hope because they believe Jesus is going to come again, even though they don’t know when.
Hope is a really wonderful and very important thing for people. It gets us through very hard and very sad times. No matter how bad things are, we can still have hope.
I think it is wonderful that the followers of Jesus loved him and missed him so much that they felt his presence among them even after he was dead. It’s wonderful that their hope that he would return helped them keep trying to follow his teachings even though they were probably sad and angry. It’s wonderful that Christians even today try to live lives that Jesus would be proud of because they are hoping that he will come again.
Whatever we think about the Easter story, the idea that we can always have hope, no matter what, is a really good idea. And, we can always try to remember the teachings of Jesus in the Bible, like this one: the golden rule.
I have it printed on some gold paper: golden rulers. Let’s pass them around. Please read it aloud with me: Do to others what you want them to do to you.