by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

CALL TO WORSHIP

Good morning!

We gather this Easter Day

In this community of faith

To renew the hope in our hearts,

To acknowledge the possibility of new life,

And to affirm the power of love to transform.

Come, let us worship together.

“But I don’t believe in God—or the Easter Bunny!”  The sentiments in my title this morning are not my own, but similar to expressions that I hear from some Unitarian Universalists around this time of year—they have trouble with Easter, seeing as how they think it’s highly unlikely that Jesus actually did rise from the dead, and so this season, with all its celebration, with the brass and the lilies and the new clothes and so forth is uncomfortable for them.  These folks put Easter in the same category with the tooth fairy and Santa Claus.

So I’m here this morning in defense of Easter—not in defense of a literal resurrection, mind you, nor even in defense of Christianity, but in defense of the story.  In my sermon last week I talked about story, and how story brings truth, forms belief, forms one’s theology, in fact.  Story is steeped in metaphorical language—that is to say, figurative language, the language of suggestion, so that the reader or listener might capture the larger truth underneath the surface narrative, or the literal story.  Metaphor makes the abstract concrete, so that the mind can more easily grasp the meaning.  And so we find that our Biblical stories are full of this metaphorical language.

Jesus speaks so often in parables, in stories that teach spiritual truths.  For example, he tells of the prodigal son, who insists on taking his inheritance early, who wastes it in riotous living, and then comes to his father begging for forgiveness.  His father welcomes him, puts a ring on his finger, and kills the fatted calf and prepares a feast for his friends.  Is this a story that we can take literally?  I don’t think so.  As I once heard a preacher say, in speaking about this parable, “I tried the same thing when I was a young man, and when I came back home, my father damn near killed the prodigal son.”  No, this is a story about the generosity, the absolute bounty, of God’s love.  Beyond all logic.  Beyond anything we expect or deserve.

But some of you are thinking—there she goes again, using that word God, and I don’t believe in God.  If you are feeling that way, I think you’ll be more comfortable if you understand that when I use the word God, I have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about.  For me, God is a word for the Mystery in which we exist; it is a word for the Sacredness that I sense in the earth, in the universe.  It is what is, it is the ground of my being, as Tillich would say, it is reality.  Let’s put it this way—I’m not God, I’m pretty sure of that, and I’m accountable to something larger than myself.  I choose to call that to which I am accountable, God.  Metaphorical language.  Mother God, Father God, Beloved, use whatever name you like—it’s all metaphor.  If you choose to imagine your God as a being in the sky, or as a guru from India, or a carved Buddha, or an icon from the Catholic cathedral, that’s fine with me—because it’s all the same.  We’re all reaching for the Holy.  We’re just human, and there’s this longing that we have to be whole, and we’re reaching out in different ways, and that’s what we have in common, the longing—all people, in all times, in all places.

My younger son Madison, who is an agnostic, and whose formal training is in math and physics and law—you know, disciplines of logic—Madison lets me know he’s uncomfortable with my faith.  Once when we were on a long drive together, I took the risk of telling him a lengthy story about how I was called into the ministry, and the story included what I would have to call a mystical experience.  When I finished, there was this long silence, and I was thinking, “He has been moved,” and then he said, “Mom, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”  Actually, I don’t give a flip about his theology—his or yours.  I am not willing to waste one breath arguing about it.  The important thing, as Jesus pointed out over and over again, is how well do you love?  What’s in your heart?  That’s what matters.  That’s it.  Whether you are a visitor from a Christian church this morning or a U.U. Christian, or Jewish, or a Buddhist, or agnostic, or a hard-core atheist, I’d like to invite all of you to come together with me as we talk about the Easter story, a story that has meaning for every one of us.  

Why do we have Easter anyway?  Where does it come from?  Well, the simple answer is that the name is derived from the German Eostre, a fertility goddess who was honored with a fertility festival.  When the Germanic tribes were Christianized, Eostre merged with the Christian Pesach celebrations.  That’s the history.  But why do we persist in celebrating Easter?  I believe we celebrate Easter because we know we’re in bondage, and we want to be free.  I want to tell you a story about being in bondage.

In Germany, they tell the tale of the circus bear who lived for years in a 9 X 9 cage, a cramped space for such a large creature.  He was fed and watered and groomed indifferently, and so he became sad-looking and bedraggled.  When the circus moved from town to town on rutted, rural roads, he was bounced around in his small cage; and when he was viewed by circus-goers, they would often poke and prod him through the bars.

Finally the circus failed, and lo and behold the bear was released to the famous Berlin zoo.  This was like bear heaven, with its flowing water, bathing pools, trees, and ledges—plus other bears to play with!  But even though he had all of this at his disposal, this bear had learned all too well his boundaries, and so day after day, all he did was to pace back and forth in a 9-foot by 9-foot square.  He continued ‘til the end of his days to enslave himself, even in the midst of his freedom. 

Anyone who lives for very long in this world will know what it is to be in bondage, trapped by cultural expectations, or by the past (remembered or not), or just by circumstance.  We know what it is to suffer various kinds of deaths, not only the loss of people we love, but the loss of a dream, the loss of a life plan, the loss of certain abilities, certain life options, as age creeps up—or as we deal with illness or injury.  And so we all, whatever our theology, we all need Easter.

Let us then consider the story of Jesus.  Yes, it’s about resurrection, but it’s also about betrayal and loss of a grand plan, it’s about cowardice, it’s about the execution of an innocent man.  Without Good Friday, of course, there can be no Easter.

The disciples, you see, had plans—big plans.  They thought that their leader, who after all could perform all kinds of magical healing, would overthrow the Romans, would restore the temple.  Jesus would become their king!  They argued over who would have the highest honors when they got to heaven.  In other words, Jesus’s followers missed the point, big time.  Didn’t they hear him say “the last shall be first”?  Didn’t they get it when he kept telling them that he was not God, that he just came to show them something of God?  Apparently not.  They said they would do anything for him.  But when he asks just one thing, that they pray with him in the Garden of Gethsemane before he is arrested, they all fall asleep.  Too tired to pray.  Then one who loves him betrays him—out of disappointment?  Ignorance?  There was money involved.  It’s a human story.  Oh, it’s a human story.  Jesus is arrested and imprisoned.  His right-hand man, Peter, vehemently denies that he ever knew Jesus.  Jesus is tried, tortured, and executed in the mode of choice of the Romans—crucifixion.  His men scatter.  Only women remain—his mother, Mary Magdalene, and Mary, the mother of James, among them.

For the disciples, the dream has crumbled into dust.  Jesus is dead.  They couldn’t defend him, and he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, defend himself.  If he was a God, why didn’t he?  They are powerless, completely defeated.  Some of them are haunted by guilt.  They have no Plan B.  All is lost.  They fall into despair.

But then something very strange happens.  They begin to see Jesus among them, to experience him in a new way.  Mary Magdalene does not recognize Jesus when she sees him, and she in fact thinks he is the gardener, and she says, “Look, if you’ve taken Jesus away, tell me where he is, so I can go and get the body.”  Two disciples are walking down a road and are joined by the risen Christ, and they go along for seven miles and yet still do not recognize him until he blesses their meal, and then he vanishes.  Clearly, this Jesus is not a resuscitated corpse. The resurrected Jesus tells his disciples that they have a mission—“as my Father has sent me, so send I you.”  They are to witness to the power of love, to let people know of a love that is more lasting than any earthly kingdom, that is more powerful even than death.  They are frightened, and they feel grossly ill-prepared, but there is something about this risen Jesus that has changed them, that has given them strength and purpose and a kind of clarity that they never had before.  They are not naïve—they know the dangers they will face, but they know why they are living, and they are willing to die that others might know the power of this love and might be delivered from bondage—the bondage of the flesh, the bondage of desire, the bondage of ego. 

So what is the real miracle here?  Somebody coming back from the dead?  I don’t think so—the real miracle is what happened to the disciples.  They were delivered from their pre-occupation with self, from their egotistical plans, and now they have given themselves to Love, with a capital L.  That’s the real miracle.  It happened to them, and I’m telling the story once again this morning a couple of thousand years later, as it has been told so many times before, because it can happen in our lives, too.  That’s why we tell the story each Easter.  Here are some recent miracles I want to tell you about:

--Ashley Smith had a craving for a cigarette at 2:00 a.m. and went out to get a pack.  Bad idea.  She found herself staring into the barrel of the loaded gun of one Brian Nichols, a man who was wanted for murder.  According to Smith, Nichols forced her into her apartment, tied her up, and told her, “I’m not going to hurt you if you just do what I say.”  Well, something intervened, and Smith decided to talk with her captor, to tell her story.  She says she saw him not as a monster, but as a human being.  She told how her husband had been stabbed in a dispute and had died in her arms, how she then had developed a drug problem, how she had been picked up for drunk driving, how she had given custody of her young daughter to her aunt.  She showed Nichols her own woundedness, and she saw the wounds in him.  Now strange as this may seem, Nichols decided to go to prison and turn his life around.  This doesn’t excuse his crimes.  Or her failings.  But it does say that in the hardest of circumstances, redemption is possible. Miracles do happen.

--Another story.  There is a man who had been abandoned by his father, for he was what we used to call an “illegitimate child,” as if any child could be illegitimate—you see, the father was a respectable married man with two sons by his wife.  On his deathbed, the father told the story of the third son, and the two other sons, after searching for months and months, finally found their brother.  Turns out that he was a brilliant academic, a college professor.  Never could make a relationship, though—his heart seemed closed down, except for the dogs he cared for, stray dogs that he rescued from the street.  He had no idea that he had any kin.  The three brothers live far apart, but they now see one another from time to time on holidays, and they stay in touch—for the first time in his life, the college professor has a family, and these brothers love him and want him.

--And a third story.  This one about soldiers in Iraq.  Two had been badly wounded by a road-side bomb and were lying in a ditch, helpless.  An insurgent threw a live hand grenade into the ditch.  One of the soldiers, the officer, made a split-second decision—he decided that his wounds were so severe that he probably wouldn’t survive, and so he threw his body over the body of the enlisted man, to protect him from the blast.  The officer had over 30 pieces of shrapnel in his body, but he survived—and so did the enlisted man.  (The survival is not the miracle, the sacrifice is.)

To me, these are all miracle stories—this kind of thing is about all the miracle I need, to tell you the truth.  I don’t need a corpse rising from the dead.  I see lives changing—I see it all the time.  I see love doing absolutely amazing things.  It comes about, I think, through both intentionality and grace—it comes when we are willing, and when we enter into a partnership with the Holy, and we say, I just want to do some good in this world, to be some good in this world.  Intentionality on our part, and grace from the universe, freely given.

And so on this Easter Day, I want to suggest to you that perhaps our purpose on this earth is to participate in this love-consciousness, this love story, as fully as possible—our bodies, through which we experience our living, make it difficult to understand that we are essentially spiritual creatures, but that miraculous love breaks through from time to time, and we know that there is something that trumps even death.  Jesus came not to do magic tricks and have us worship him as God—he came to show us that we are of God—and that therefore these miracles of love are possible in our own  lives.  That’s why we sing “Alleluia, alleluia!” at Easter time.  So be it.  Amen.

PRAYER

Spirit of Life, it is new life that we ask for on this Easter morning.  Sometimes it is hard to have faith that things will turn around, that hope is realistic, that new dreams will take the place of the ones we lose.  But give us that faith; help us to live in that hope.  Remind us of the power of this eternal love in our lives, and help us to practice its power every chance we get, that we might be renewed, lifted up, and that we bless those we walk among.  Amen.

BENEDICTION

What is the new life that beckons to you this Easter Day?  I charge you to answer the call.  Go in love, and go in peace.