I ran into Rev. Shawnthea Monroe-Mueller in a coffeeshop earlier this week, and she was working on her sermon for today. I told her I was writing an Easter sermon too! After she finished laughing, she asked me, "What in the world do Unitarians do for Easter?" I quoted Garrison Keillor: "Oh, we talk a lot about spring, rebirth, and try not to mention You-Know-Who."
I actually volunteered to do this Easter service about a year ago. I thought it was a shame that we UUs sometimes get squeamish around the important Christian holidays and thought I would try my shot at this one.
I should start by confessing a big weakness of mine. [Two, actually - Sid Morton can tell you that, although I am a fairly creative person and also a visual artist and graphic designer, I am incapable of looking at a blueprint or floor plan and visualizing the actual room or building. You can imagine how helpful I am as Board liaison to the building committee.] The other has become a longstanding family joke — I am almost incapable of detecting metaphor. Even though the myriad jobs I have held throughout my life have required me to be proficient at writing, planning, administering and creating, the simplest metaphor eludes me. I guess I'm with Freud when he said sometimes a cigar is just a cigar...
One of the great things about Easter, though, is that it is a metaphor on such a grand scale that even I can grasp it. The bunnies, the eggs, springtime, the resurrection — I get it!! Clearly, our earliest accomplishment as a species at the dawn of intelligence was the discovery and awareness of the rhythms of the earth and its growing seasons. The miracle of life coming back again and again from bare earth and dead-looking seeds was reflected and celebrated, somehow, in every religion, from prehistoric times to this very morning.
One powerful idea (and it's a popular one) which arose from observing this annual miracle was the hope that we don't really die. Faith in a seed, as Henry Thoreau would say. From the Egyptian resurrection story of Osiris whose scattered parts are gathered and put back together again by his lover Isis, to the resurrection of Jesus’ friend Lazarus, to the story of Jesus’ own death and resurrection, and then to various afterlife scenarios — from Eastern karma and reincarnation to Christian visions of heaven and hell — all spring from a belief that the grave does not hold us or our precious individuality.
But where does that leave us UUs? Our Christian Unitarian forbears followed the path of their intellect, forging the way for us by scrutinizing the Bible and arguing against interpretations that they felt strayed from the actual Word (for which they were made martyrs). Many of us who came to this denomination from Christian childhoods made the exodus because of the sheer impossibility (implausibility) of the Easter story. While the majority of Fargoans are ecstatically celebrating the foundation of their faith today in a profusion of lilies and choral anthems with lots of brass in big Lutheran churches, here we are in our modest little building with our thin gruel of existentialism sprinkled with humanist liberal principles.
Well, that's how it might look to our various friends and neighbors, although they certainly don't share unanimity of thought among themselves — most mainstream Christians celebrate a literal, physical resurrection of the body of Jesus, while more liberal Christians consider a more metaphorical resurrection, emphasizing the rebirth of spirit and the emergence of the Christian church after Jesus' death.
But there is much richness at Easter here, too. So what is Easter to Unitarian Universalists??
While I can only speak for myself (which in itself is a basic UU principle — the individual search for truth and meaning), I believe that the Easter season does hold a powerful message of celebration and rebirth. To me, the miracle of Jesus is not that he literally came back to life on earth again, but that his message did not die. His life's work did not die. What this one amazing guy said and taught two thousand years ago was so precious, so enlightening, that it lives on until today and started a worldwide religion. But Jesus is not alone...
The history of humanity is a rich interweaving of human effort and enlightenment that lives on throughout the seasons and the centuries. The words of Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Gandhi, Jefferson, Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jimmy Carter, Shawnthea Monroe-Mueller, Cheryl Bergian, you, me — the miracle is that what we do and who we are does indeed live on! Whether our words and deeds start a global religion, a national movement, a statewide coalition, a local initiative or a family observance, we are all immortal. We live on — in our work, in our families, and in those we leave behind.
So, knowing that, I believe we should embrace the season of rebirth, our private Easter, and challenge ourselves to re-energize along with the earth, along with our neighbors. Just as the tulips poke through the unexpected snow, our voices can be heard above the madness, even if by just one other person. Celebrate Easter in yourself, in your muscles, in your breathing, in your commitment to what you believe. Ride the springtime wave of warmth, growth, sunshine and energy. Shake off the stress and gloom of winter and feel the hard seed inside of you sprout new growth.
Here I should pause for a moment, brought to you by "That's Easy For You To Say." Sometimes we don't feel like celebrating spring. I had a big surprise not long ago while talking to a mental health care professional who told me that the worst season for depression is not the Christmas holidays (which apparently we can brace ourselves for) but spring and Easter. Like that great old jazz song, "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most" says, it's the time of year when we're expected to feel energized, positive, upbeat and sunny. But sometimes, especially lately, many of us feel that what we are trying to say isn't being heard by anybody. What good is rebirth if your light is wasted in a world that doesn't want it?
This might be where faith comes in. Not necessarily faith in the beyond or the hereafter, but faith in rebirth — the rebirth of ourselves, our energy, our best efforts. Faith that the words and hearts of individuals do matter. Faith that our lives matter.
I heard Rabbi Harold Kushner speaking on MPR last week, and he was talking about a Sunday school class he had recently taught to high school kids. He posed the question, "How many of you believe in God?" He expected roughly a half-and-half response, which would lead to a lively discussion. To his horror and disgust, not one student raised their hand. He thought, "Three thousand years of suffering and sacrifice have brought us to this — a bunch of spoiled suburban kids who don't believe in God?? I wanted to wring their necks!!" Well, he went on with the class and discussion, and later asked, "How many of you have, at one time or another, felt close to God?" Every student raised their hand. Every one. He wondered, "What is this — they claim they don’t believe in God, but they feel close to God?"
Actually, I can identify with those kids. I don't know if I could have raised my hand to the first question either — such a bald statement of belief is still out of my reach, after all these years. But I have felt close to God, if that's what one can call it. I felt close to God at a rehearsal on Tuesday — I had the opportunity to sing with my old buddies in the Fargo-Moorhead Chamber Chorale in an upcoming performance of Gabriel Faure's "Requiem." That, to me, is one of the most sublime and transcendent pieces of music in the world, and I am always transported to some more wonderful plane every time I have an opportunity to sing it. I felt close to God this week when I held the newborn babies of two of my friends. I felt close to God when I spent Friday evening sifting through a box of my old earrings and my late mother's old earrings with my teenage daughter, while both of us reminisced mother-daughter moments.
Maybe all of that was simply feeling my own and everyone else's mortality. Maybe that's why spring feels more wonderful each passing year. Our beloved dog, our old westie terrier, was very ill this winter and seemed near death. As he began to make an unexpected recovery, we all found ourselves hoping he would at least experience one more spring.
So in my own way, I love Easter and feel quite happy hitching a ride on the ancient, universal celebration of the miracle of rebirth, however it has been told throughout the ages and in all its sacred variations. I make it a personal holiday of rebirth — an annual observance of the possibility of renewed energy and life. Though this approach may be not be comforting or right for everyone — I am reminded of Woody Allen, who said, "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying" — it's enough for me.
I know that in some small, unpredictable way, our actions live on. We live on.
I can live with the unknowable mystery of the beyond, but I do love a good spring...