First Parish Unitarian UniversalistWhat Here Abides?
Rev. Cricket Potter
First Parish Unitarian Universalist - Canton
Easter Sunday - April 4, 2010
First Reading
Our first reading from the Gospel of Luke is the same scriptural passage that churches around the world are sharing today as we all celebrate Easter. In this passage, we find several women going to Jesus’ tomb to anoint his body. Here is Luke 24: 1-12:
But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.’ Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.
Second Reading
Our second reading is from the book entitled Learning to Fall: The Blessings of an Imperfect Life by Philip Simmons. Simmons was a 35-year-old husband and father of two children when he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease. He wrote this book as his effort to explore what was most true and lasting in life so that as he – and ultimately we – had to face into death, life would not lose its meaning or its beauty.
I could have chosen any number of passages from this powerful book, but given the season of floods, this passage from a chapter entitled “Mud Season” seemed most fitting for us today. He starts the chapter by describing the misery of mud season in rural New Hampshire where the ubiquitous dirt roads become quagmires and where one simply can’t fight the muck that is all around. Here are Simmons’ words:
We all, of course, go through personal mud seasons, and these can occur at any time of year. We suffer illness and depression, the loss of loved ones, failed or failing marriages, crises of faith – in ourselves, in others, in our gods….
Every mud season is a kind of death, with resurrection lying on the other side. In the mud painting my daughter did at school, the great brown swath across the bottom two-thirds of the paper is topped with tiny, bright flowers. The image suggests causality – mud makes flowers – but also necessity: no mud, no flowers. As I enter my various mud seasons, I’ve learned to ask: what death is this? Or what is it within me that needs to die? And out of this death, what resurrection will come?
Sermon
In a sermon a number of years ago, the Rev. Greg Ward, minister in Monterey California, suggested a new and highly efficient process for testing and approving aspiring Unitarian Universalist ministers.
The solution is to put these aspiring ministers in a room, each with a desk, a pencil, and a single sheet of paper and tell them that this is the only test they will be given to see if they qualify for Unitarian Universalist ministry.
You tell them that they can have all the time they need and then ask them to turn over their papers.
You then watch as they read the bold print at the top “Explain Easter” and the words underneath in parentheses (so that your congregation will understand).
“From there on,” Rev. Ward concludes,
“it is simply a matter of weeding out those applicants who run screaming from the room. Any one who can condense centuries of religious writing, church and cultural tradition, and (the volumes of) contradictory interpretations – they’re in.”
But seriously, as he admits, thankfully such a test isn’t given because most of us would fail.
Easter is the lynchpin of the Christian faith.
And for us Unitarian Universalists, it is a story that elicits a broad range of responses.
Yet, it is a moment in history when something powerful happened and the beginnings of a new faith took root.
One man touched people so deeply that even his death could not destroy his presence in their lives.
He had a message to share about how to live life fully and faithfully, and that message could not be kept down.
So, I don’t want us to shy away from the story of Easter and focus just on the hopeful metaphor of springtime.
I believe that the human aspect of this story – and any story in the Bible – can teach us about ourselves if we let it.
Such stories can help us better understand our own hopes, doubts, and fears.
So, let’s face into this story together and explore its message for us today.
Going back in the story to the events leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion, we find the apostles afraid and falling apart as a group.
Judas makes a deal with the authorities and brings them to Jesus thus leading to Jesus’ arrest.
After the arrest, Peter denies even knowing Jesus – not just once, but three different times.
And in the gospels of Matthew and Mark, Jesus’ followers are said to have completely forsaken him and fled after his arrest.
As far as they are concerned, all is lost.
We must remember that these folks were living in constant fear under harsh Roman rule, never feeling truly safe and having little hope for a better tomorrow.
Then, here comes this young man who fearlessly stands up to the Pharisees.
He proclaims a future time when the first would be last and the last would be first.
He tells stories of a new way of being where we are all neighbors and all care for one another regardless of class or sect or other needless divisions.
He upholds the worth and dignity of all people who come with an open heart and an open mind, wanting to build a new way.
And his followers feel this amazing sense of empowerment and hope.
He must be the Messiah predicted throughout their Hebrew scriptures.
But then all goes terribly wrong as Jesus is captured and put to death.
Can you blame his followers for running away in despair?
And when the women find the men and share their news about the empty tomb and meeting two angel-like figures who say that Jesus is risen, can you blame his followers for taking it all as nothing but “an idle tale”?
Only Peter is willing to consider the possibilities.
He goes to see for himself, finds the empty tomb, and goes home not in fear but amazed at what he has seen.
As the story continues in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus joins two of the apostles who are on their way to Emmaus.
He walks with them and hears their story about the women finding an empty tomb.
He patiently listens as they share their woes about believing that Jesus was The One who was going to save Israel but now he was dead, gone, of no help.
Jesus finally responds, “O foolish men and slow of heart to believe.”
He the goes on to remind them of scripture, of how the glory could only come after the suffering.
The men hardly listen, distracted as they are.
Not until they stop for dinner and Jesus breaks the bread, blesses it, and offers it to them are their eyes opened.
Finally, in their stopping and paying attention to Jesus, they recognize him.
And so, Jesus vanishes, perhaps because he accomplished what was needed.
The apostles realize their own ignorance:
‘Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road?’ they (say) excitedly. (Luke 24:32)
They realize that they were so blinded by their own fear and sadness over what they had lost that they couldn’t begin to see what was right before them.
All was not lost – it just hadn’t worked out as they had planned.
Jesus was among them.
His message of love and hope and of a power that was stronger than death was real and still alive in their hearts.
With the power of that revelation burning in their hearts, they rose, ready to share the good news.
Now, you may be saying, “That’s all fine and good, but I don’t take the Bible literally. The story of the empty tomb along with Jesus’ appearance among his apostles has little meaning for me because I don’t believe it.”
And I would say, “I understand. Just bear with me a little longer.”
Here I turn to Marcus Borg, a professor of religion and author of many bestselling books such as Reading the Bible Again for the First Time.
Borg suggests that we should consider the Bible in the same way that the Buddhist tradition views the teachings of the Buddha - as “a finger pointing to the moon.”
In this light, the teachings are a guide pointing us to the ultimate truth but the teachings themselves are not meant to be worshipped as the ultimate truth.
So for us, the Bible, like other sacred texts, is that finger pointing.
It is not the moon.
Rather than argue about the finger itself – and boy, can we Unitarian Universalists do that! - we are encouraged by Borg and many other scholars to focus our attention on the truths it points toward.
In other words, the truths about ourselves and about life.
Another great writer, and someone who just happened to be the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark for 24 years, John Shelby Spong adds his own twist to this theme.
In his book entitled Resurrection: Myth or Reality?, Spong suggests that we need to “enter the essence of Easter.”
As he explains:
If we (try to) locate the narratives of Easter in an objective moment, we will doom Easter to extinction. Attempts to capture that moment in theological words or liturgical symbols only lead to the tyranny of creeds or the hostile, oppressive actions of those who call themselves true believers, who act as if they alone possess something called true faith….
Perhaps we need to be reminded that our ultimate goal is not objectivity, certainty, or rational truth. (Our ultimate goal) is rather life, wholeness… and an expanded sense of transcendence.
Now that’s powerful stuff, particularly coming from a highly esteemed Episcopal bishop.
I would dare say he is a Unitarian Universalist at heart.
So, what these writers and many others are suggesting is that we focus not on the yes-or-no question “Did this actually happen?”
Rather, we are encouraged to ask,
“What do these human characters, in all their hopes, fears, and flawshave to teach us about how we can live our own lives more fully?”
In my life, it is these hopes, fears, and flaws that I wrestle with day in and day out.
From your stories, I know that many of you wrestle with these, too.
So often, we come to a place that can feel hopeless and scary, and we can feel that there is just no way forward.
Lust like the apostles, when things don’t go as we planned, we can give up in defeat.
Our very human response is to ant to run or hide.
Philip Simmons, in his book Learning to Fall, puts it this way:
All of us at some point have faced the tree fallen across the road, all of us have been forced to ask who we think we are. We have lost jobs, marriages, health. We have seen friends fail and bodies wither. With each loss the trapdoor opens beneath our feet and we fall, feeling the terrible wind, gazing upward at a life now forever out of reach.
And he goes on to conclude that,
“We can resist fate and continue to suffer, or we can open ourselves to the fall.”
He also concludes that by letting go and falling, we open up to what does abide.
We learn that amidst the many losses we face – losses that can feel like deaths of their own – all is not lost.
By grace and by the very power of life, we learn that sometimes we need to enter the dark to more truly see the light.
We learn how, from that scary place of emptiness, we can emerge to discover an abundance to life we had failed to notice before.
We learn as well that love connects us profoundly despite the human barriers we erect at times and that loves endures long past any final human breath.
I think of the words shared by a parishioner recently.
This person faced into that dark place of a potentially scary diagnosis and thanks to your many cards and calls, felt amazingly held and upheld.
This person wrote to me saying,
I live every moment with an appreciation that I had just glimpsed before. A definite gift is that my relationships are deeper and more authentic. I’m so grateful.
So the essence of Easter, as I see it, is about having our hearts opened to what does abide.
It is about facing into life’s murkiness and trusting that out of it new things will come.
It is about feeling the power of life and love and letting this power guide us, not fear.
Getting back to Jesus’ followers, as John Shelby Spong describes, they went from a fearful and distraught group of individuals in complete crisis to people that were suddenly hopeful and courageous in the weeks following Jesus’ crucifixion.
Call it a mystery, a resurrection, or a hope that ultimately could not die, but they realized in a profound way that Jesus had not abandoned them.
He had said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
And so, they realized that they were not alone, that the spirit of love and community, as he had promised, was enduring.
And the proof has been a faith that has been passed down over two millennia carrying a message that does transform lives.
May we allow it to transform ours.
What here abides?
I close with John Shelby Spong’s own reflection:
Easter for me is eternal, subjective, mythological, nonhistorical, and nonphysical. Yet, Easter is also something real for me….
Easter and resurrection are aspects of a human experience, timeless but always subjective, breaking through our barriers now and again in mind-altering, consciousness-raising revelations….
This means that I no longer look for ultimate meaning in some distant place beyond this world. I rather seek these realities in every moment and in every relationship…..
For me (this is all) an invitation into life, which, when explored deeply enough, when lived fully enough, when engaged significantly enough, is a way of passing into transcendence.
May it be so in our lives as well.
Amen.