Easter: the Verb Sunday March 27, 2016

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1 Easter: the Verb Sunday March 27, 2016 On a visit to the United States, the Pope was spending a weekend on the Maine coast, at the Universalist Camp Ferry Beach. He d never spent any time with Unitarian Universalists before, and he was having a wonderful time with this bunch of people so free, so open. He enjoyed lingering over coffee in the dining room, talking and singing. He enjoyed sitting in on workshops and participating in the morning chapels; he even led a friendship circle one night on the beach, and he laughed gleefully every time the gulls flapped down for their nightly feeding. He was enjoying himself so much that when the time came to leave, he lingered. He was due back in Boston for a Sunday night dinner with the Cardinal. The limousine and driver arrived after lunch plenty of time to get him back for the 7 p.m. dinner, but the Pope told the driver to wait while he went for one last swim, one last walk on the beach. Time stretched and speeded as it does at the beach, and by the time he was ready to leave, it was after 5. He apologized to the driver for keeping him waiting. I wouldn t mind, your Holiness, the driver said, but there s no way we can get to Boston in time for your dinner. But I have to be there, exclaimed the Pope. I m the guest of honor. I m sorry. It isn t possible, said the driver. Traffic going south at this time of day will be terrible. I can get us there, said the Pope. You just sit in the back and relax and let me drive. So, the driver got into the back, and the Pope took the wheel and headed south on the Maine Turnpike. Well, he was going 90 miles an hour weaving in and out of the other cars heading back to Massachusetts on a summer Sunday afternoon you can imagine it. Somehow he made it through Maine and New Hampshire, but just after he crossed the border, just south of Newburyport, the Pope saw a car with flashing blue lights zoom up behind him, and he obediently slowed and pulled over. The state trooper got out of his car and walked up to the driver s window. Do you know how fast you were going? he asked. You were doing 90 miles an hour. I m sorry, sergeant, said the Pope. We need to get back for a dinner in Boston. Wait a minute, said the trooper. I ll be right back. He went back to his car and radioed in to his supervisor. I just stopped a car doing 90 on 95, he said. So, what s the problem? asked his supervisor. Give him a ticket. But this is somebody very important. How important can he be, that he was doing 90 and shouldn t get a ticket? Very important. 1

2 Who is this person who s so important? Is it Governor Baker? Did you stop the governor? No, he s more important than Governor Baker. Is a senator? Did you stop Senator Warren or Senator Markey? No. More important than a senator. Who s more important than the governor or the senators? - the President? Did you stop President Obama for speeding? No. It wasn t President Obama. This is somebody more important than the president. Well, who is it? I don t know, said the state trooper, but he s got to be very important. The Pope is driving him. Now, you may be thinking, Wow ministers will go to any length to work in a joke on Easter, but the trooper s logic has a point. The trooper looked behind the important person he saw in front of him, the person he could name and identify, and assumed that the person he was driving, the person he was serving, the one behind him, was then even more important. He didn t get caught up in the figure of the Pope, but was able to see him as a pointer to someone greater. On Easter morning we need to remember to do the same not get caught up with the figure of Jesus what happened to him, really? and who was he, really? but look behind him to the truth to which his life, his story points us. Too many churches, however, including some of our own tradition, will be dwelling with what Emerson called noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus and not seeing that the story really points to larger questions and answers. Over the centuries there have been so many theories about what really happened to Jesus body after he was executed as a traitor, taken down from the cross, and prepared hurriedly for burial in a borrowed tomb because the sun was setting for the Sabbath to begin. Did the disciples steal the body and hide it to erase the memory of their Rabbi s shameful end? Did the Jewish leaders or Roman governors steal it to prevent the followers of Jesus from rallying around it? Did the gardener get tired of visitors trampling his lettuce plants and move it without telling anyone? (That really is a theory I came across!) Did he rise fully in body? Is this fact? Is it metaphor? Is it allegory? Is it poetry? What does it mean? Well, I ask, Does it matter? To focus on Jesus the man and what did or did not happen to his body misses the point. What matters is not what happened to his body after he died, but what happened to the spirit, the Christ within him. The stories of the empty tomb, the angelic visitors, and then the appearance of Jesus himself to Mary point us to a truth beyond the stories: the truth that whatever happens to the body, the spirit lives on. Death does not conquer the spirit which 2

3 Jesus embodied. And since we embody the exact same spirit, death does not conquer our spirits either. When we focus on the person of Jesus instead of on the power of the Christ spirit, we are not only making the same mistake made throughout much of Christian history, but repeating the mistake the disciples made too. While Jesus was alive, they had concentrated on the man instead of listening to his words. They had thought he was the important one, not the one of whom he spoke. As Buddhists say, they looked at the pointing finger, instead of at the moon. Have you ever been in a very dark space with one small bright light? Perhaps reading in bed at night. Perhaps walking in the woods with your flashlight. Perhaps sitting around a fire on a camping trip. Perhaps on a stage in a darkened auditorium. You can see what is within the circle of light, but beyond that circle, everything is blotted out. Jesus presence for his disciples was often like that small bright light: instead of illuminating the surroundings, it made everything else dark. Not until the light was extinguished could they see what was beyond its brightness. Not until Jesus died were they able to look beyond the man to his message. But first their eyes had to adjust to the dark. But some of them couldn t face it. At first they metaphorically screwed their eyes shut. They d open them a crack to make sure that the light had not returned and then close them again. They hid, grieved, and refused to hope. Only Mary Magdalene, in John s account, and according to the other gospel writers some other women as well, were willing to sit in the darkness with their eyes open, waiting for their sight to adjust. So bravely, at dawn after the Sabbath had ended, Mary Magdalene went out to the burial place to visit Jesus grave. Notice that the other disciples didn t join her. Only when she ran back telling them that the grave was open and empty did two of them leave their safe-house to see for themselves. But even they didn t linger. They ran in, assured themselves that Mary wasn t deluded, and left. They weren t able to sit with the mystery. They went back to their safe-house to discuss and analyze the situation. But Mary didn t go with them. She stayed, wept, and wondered. She let the mystery be. She let the darkness cover her. T.S. Eliot wrote, I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you Which shall be the darkness of God. So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. [E]choed ecstasy Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony Of death and birth. 3

4 The agony of death and birth. That s why our tradition has joined others in debating what really happened to Jesus. It s so much easier to look at that bright light than to sit with the darkness of what he was trying to tell us. For taking his message to heart means that we too are required to go through the agony of death and birth before the darkness shall be the light and the stillness the dancing. It s much easier to believe either that one person went through that agony for all time or that nothing happened and there is nothing beyond our individual lives, nothing which transcends suffering, darkness, nor death. But those of you who have been through your own times of darkness the darkness of depression, the darkness of grief, the darkness of addiction, the darkness of illness, the darkness of despair you know that sitting in the dark with your eyes closed doesn t help. For you tried that and nothing changed. It was only when you gathered your courage, opened your eyes, and began to see what was in the darkness with you, that things began to change. You saw that you couldn t return to the way life had been before the darkness engulfed you (or to the way you d pretended it was) but you found an entrance to new life, to resurrection. You eastered. For easter isn t only a noun. It s also a verb. Easter is not a once and done historical event; it s not just about the resurrection of Jesus. Easter is what we are called to do with our lives. It is not just one joyful day annually filled with trumpets, triumphant hymns, and chocolate. To easter is a process. To easter is to go through pain, suffering, loss, and despair and find at the other end of the long dark tunnel that there is a light which beckons us on, a light into which we will come. Easter encompasses the agony of death and birth not just the birth. All of us, whatever our age, have eastered. We have all come out of tombs which imprisoned us in lives narrowed by fear into the fullness of hope, trust, and joy. We are all easter people. And eastering unites us, unites us in our triumphs and in our sufferings. We know what it is to be entombed, to be dead though living, and through that experience we are bound to all who await resurrection, and bound to help one another roll away the stones which block the tombs. For not until the whole world has eastered will we fully know the abundant life which awaits us all. Over and over as we grow toward this life, we will go through the agony of death and birth, as individuals, as a church, as a world. Each resurrection frees the spirit within us from the layers with which we cover it, frees it to shine more brightly within us and from us out into our world. Each resurrection helps us perceive and point to the truth our lives are meant to illuminate the boundless, deathless love which contains and embraces all. This is the truth the stories of 4

5 Jesus point to. This is how Jesus lived and died and lived the more. This is how Jesus eastered. Let us live so that our stories too point to this greater truth. Let us have the courage to live and die and live the more. Let us easter. Alleluia! Easter people, let us sing the closing hymn: - Pamela M. Barz 5

6 Reading John 20:1-18 Early on Sunday, the first day of the week, even before it began to get light, Mary Magdalene went to visit the tomb where Jesus had been buried. When she got there, she discovered that the stone had been removed and the tomb was open. She fled as fast as she could, and found Simon Peter and the disciple whom Jesus had been closest to. Mary blurted out, They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don t know where they have taken him. So Peter and the other disciple hurried off. They were both running at full speed, but the other disciple was faster than Peter and reached the tomb first. He didn t go in, but he bent down to peer inside and saw that the linen burial shroud had been unwrapped and left behind. Moments later, Simon Peter arrived, and barged straight into the tomb. He too, saw the unwrapped shroud lying there, and noticed that the cloth that had been on Jesus head was not with the rest of the shroud, but had been rolled up and left in a different spot. Then the other disciple followed Peter in. They had not yet got their minds around the scriptures that said that Jesus must rise from the dead, but what he saw was enough to convince him that this was no grave robbery, but something far more extraordinary. The two men left, and headed off to their homes, but Mary stayed behind and stood weeping outside the tomb. A little later she bent down to look into the tomb, and through her tears she saw two angels dressed in white. They were sitting where the body of Jesus had previously been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, Woman, why are you crying? She replied, Someone has taken away my Lord, and I have got no idea where they might have put him. Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing behind her, but she didn t realize it was him. Jesus asked her, Woman, why are you crying? Who are you looking for? Mary assumed that he was the cemetery gardener, so she said to him, Mister, if you have removed his body from the tomb, please tell me where you have put him, and I will take him off your hands. Jesus said to her, Mary! She spun around and said, Rabbouni!, which is a Hebrew word meaning Dear Teacher. Jesus said to her, Don t try to hold on to me, because I have not yet fully risen to the Father. But go now, and tell my whole family of disciples that I am rising up to the one who conceived me and conceived you, to my God and your God. So Mary Magdalene went straight to the disciples, and was the first to make the announcement, I have seen the Lord! She went on to fill them in on all that he had said to her. 6