Wake Up! An Easter Meditation
Sermon by Stephen D. Edington, April 12, 1998
Last Sunday, in speaking to some of the ways I continue to relate to the accounts of the life of Jesus in the New Testament gospels, I said that one of the major stumbling blocks for me when it comes to Christianity is that it generally tends to invest more meaning in the death of Jesus than it does in his life--in what he stood for, what he taught, how he lived, and the like. But I then went onto say that the stories, or legends of the death and resurrection of Jesus still do carry meaning for me, nonetheless. This is the Sunday, from year to year, that I use to speak to that meaning.
This past April 4 marked the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr. There was a large gathering in Memphis, Tennessee last weekend to mark and observe that very painful and, for many Americans, devastating moment in our country's history. In one of the news accounts of what became a pilgrimage to Memphis for many people last week, Rev. Jesse Jackson was quoted as saying that a trip there was like a trip to Calvary: "The site," as he put it, "of our crucifixion." The meaning of his words was clearly recognizable, I am sure, by practically all who heard or read them; by persons of any or no religious persuasion. The loss of Dr. King, and the way in which it happened, was indeed reflective of the anguish the New Testament authors describe as being felt by those who were left in the aftermath of the death of Jesus. The gospel writers describe a time of pain and fear and uncertainty and chaos, which is just how I remember the days that followed April 4, 1968 when I was a 22 year old seminarian.
I think the reason, then, that the crucifixion accounts have retained their power, well beyond whatever religious doctrines they may have also come to spawn, is because they provide a metaphor for the deeper human experiences of loss--the loss of hope, the loss of certain dreams or expectations. They can also provide a metaphor for those times when we are left wondering: Well now what? Now where do I go? Now what do I do? Interestingly enough, the earliest written gospel in the New Testament ends on that very note. The gospel of Mark-- upon which the gospels of Matthew and Luke are, in effect, expansions and adaptations--tells of no actual resurrection. The women who have come to anoint the body find that it is gone. A rather ghostly figure, as the story goes, tells them that Jesus is no longer there. The very last words of Mark's gospel state: "Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb." In many versions of the Bible a resurrection account does follow these words, but most reliable Biblical scholars agree that this is a piece of text that was added much later to bring Mark's gospel in line with the other gospels that came to written, and which were proclaiming a risen Christ or Messiah.
The PBS series that ran this past week, called "From Jesus to Christ" essentially made this same point. It was in the faith and in the writings of the first century church that an itinerant Jewish teacher and religious reformer, who had the misfortune of being taken by the Roman authorities for a political revolutionary and got himself crucified for it, becomes the resurrected Christ. Recognizing this, however, does not cause me to discount the resurrection accounts. It allows me instead to take them for what they are and then move on to consider the human meaning of resurrection itself. For just as the crucifixion can be viewed as a metaphor for certain occasions we each and all experience during the journeys of our lives, the resurrection can be treated in just the same way.
Rev. Mark Harris, a UU minister, puts it this way:
"Is the resurrection real? If we believe in a creative power that shatters the icy tomb of winter with the life-giving miracle of spring, we have seen a resurrection. If we believe in a creative power which moves tens and then tens of thousands of people to cry against the injustices of society, enabling the downfall of hatred and prejudice, then we have created a resurrection. If we believe in a creative power within each human breast which enables us to break the bonds of personal pain and know the hope of new tomorrows, then we have experienced a resurrection."Rev. Harris continues,
"At Easter time Unitarian Universalists celebrate the many resurrections of this season...We celebrate the ability of the human heart to overcome terrible personal tragedy or handicap and affirm once more the ability to love or excel when many others would have given up all hope. Easter celebrates the times of witnessing, experiencing, and creating the resurrections of human life."This is the idea I'd like to explore with you for a few minutes on this Easter morning, what does it mean to both experience and create resurrections in human life.
The first thing I would say, however, is that there are certain kinds of resurrections cannot be rushed; that cannot be forced before their time. I'm not sure how one celebrates Easter this year in many of those small towns across Alabama where tornadoes inflicted untold damage to homes and businesses and have taken at least 40 lives. Any talk there about nature bringing rebirth and renewal at this time of year would be about as cruel a metaphor as one could invoke. I'm sure this is also a very painful Easter in the town of Jonesboro, Arkansas. Just a couple of weeks ago, it monetarily became the center of the world after the school yard deaths of four young girls; deaths which came at the hands of two young boys who, at what we tend to regard as an age of innocence, had come to believe that the way to deal with whatever inner forces were troubling them was to fire loaded rifles at their classmates. Yes, Life does have a way of healing itself, but only after grief and anger and pain have been given their sway. There are instances when a resurrection cannot be rushed; it has to be allowed to come on its own terms and in its own time.
There are other kinds of resurrections, however, that do call for our participation and response if they are to happen. I chose the sermon title "Wake Up!" for today as a way of speaking to them. As I said in the Newsletter, I don't mean for the title to be accusatory in any way--as if I'm trying to ward off people sleeping through my sermons. (I've always figured the responsibility rests with me to keep you awake when I up here.) What I'm talking about is staying awake through the difficult time of loss and fear and uncertainty so that you can be a part of life's renewal when it does come. Rev. Sara Campbell described this time of year as an "in-between season when spring's warmth softens the winter earth and the winter's chill snatches back the spring air; when each day is an unpredictable and unreliable combination of what was and what will be, of the already and the not yet." We've experienced some of what she has described over the past couple of weeks as we've had temperatures ranging from the nineties to the thirties. One day I'm wearing shorts and a few day later I'm breaking out the down jacket again. Sara goes on to draw this analogy about this transitional time of year, which is a time of what was and what will be: "Transitions are times when we are neither where we were nor where we will be; when the thick skin of habit that has protected us in former times surrenders to the possibilities of growth and renewal rendering us sensitive and vulnerable until we emerge comfortable into new ways of being."
To find oneself--in the manner of this uncertain season--between an ending and a beginning, between a death-in-life and the possibility of new life, is a precarious, if not frightening place to be. Its also a time to stay awake. However dubious its historicity may be there is an intriguing account in the crucifixion and resurrection legends of the New Testament which describes how the disciples behaved in the time between the two events. To put it bluntly, they ran off and hid. They prepared to go back to the lives they had known before meeting up with Jesus, as peasant farmers and fishermen. Something very human is being recounted in that part of the story. Their plans got upset, the direction they thought their lives was taking came to an abrupt end, their hopes were dashed, they didn't know where to turn, they were vulnerable; and so they pulled back within themselves and decided to crawl back into their "thick skins of habit" as Rev. Campbell calls it. They were sensitive and vulnerable, and figured we might as well go back to our old lives.
Think for a moment of how we most often respond to our sensitive and vulnerable times: A relationship ends; you lose a friend or relative unexpectedly; you lose a vision of yourself and of what you thought your life was going to be. Some of the assumptions and values you'd been living by no longer quite fit or sustain you anymore; old issues you'd thought were settled come back to disturb in unexpected ways. Something dies when events like these occur, and our usual human response is not unlike that of the disciples--we run off and hide. The hideout may not be a physical location so much as a place within ourselves where we cannot be reached or touched or bothered. To use another metaphor from the New Testament legend, there is something safe and comforting about curling up in a cave and putting a large stone over the entryway when one is in an especially vulnerable place; and, up to a point, this is both a natural and necessary move.
But there also comes a time to wake up; a time for re-engagement. We are given our biological lives by acts of procreation, but we have to keep waking up to that life by choosing to return to it, especially after those times when it has been diminished or even seemingly destroyed. Waking up in this manner can be risky, like coming out of a cave into daylight again. Rev. Campbell once more: "Transitions are times when we are neither where we were or where we will be; when the thick skin that has protected us surrenders to the possibilities of growth and renewal, rendering us sensitive and vulnerable until we emerge into new ways of being again."
The resurrection of the Earth is something we witness, participate in, and hopefully are blessed by when that resurrection is a benign and life-giving one. But the resurrections-in-life, as I've tried to describe here, require something of us. They require that we stay awake to the promise that in the face of some of the life denying events that are visited upon us, and in the face of some of the self-defeating ways we choose to live, we can choose to come back to life again. One of the many meanings I take from the crucifixion and resurrection myths is that sometimes certain things have to die in order for rebirth to take place. This legend contains the message that, yes, there are certain things we can die to: Old traps, old attachments to unrealized and unrealistic expectations of ourselves, old patterns of self-destructive behavior. There are certain things we can die to in order that we can re-awaked to renewed and life-affirming ways of being.
Easter is not about living forever, and resurrection is not about the final banishment of death any more than its about the physical resuscitation of a corpse. Resurrection, instead, is what happens when we can break free of the bonds that death places upon us while we are yet still alive. Resurrection is what happens after the fact and finality of death is acknowledged, and when we then wake up to the life that is ours for the time that we are given to live it.
Well, for all of the metaphorical mileage I've been getting from the New Testament gospels today, my very favorite Easter story has nothing to do with crosses, crucifixions, tombs, stones, or resurrections. Its central character, in fact, is a bear. I like the story so much that I tell it about every 3 or 4 years, so its about time again. Its a sad story really, but not without a note of hope. I'll close with it.
There was a bear, who was a part of a circus. He did not perform, he had no talents that could impress human beings. All he could do was to be a bear. He was kept in a nine by nine foot cage and pulled from one town to the next with this rather poorly managed circus. In each town the circus came to the bear and his cage were placed near the entryway to the circus as a way of attracting the townspeople so they would then pay to come in and see the performance. He was often teased and harassed by those who stopped by his cage. Since he was not part of the show the bear was poorly cared for. He ate whatever was left over once the other animals had been fed; his cage was rarely cleaned. All this bear could do, all day long, was walk around in an area that was 9 X 9 feet square.
The circus, as I said, was poorly managed; so much so that one day it finally went bankrupt. The performers went to look for other circuses that might hire them. The tents, chairs, and other such pieces of equipment were sold to pay off the indebtedness of the circus owners. The animals were given away to whatever zoos would take them. And by some stroke of fortune the bear in the 9 X 9 foot cage was sent to one of these zoos where the animal areas are built to resemble, as best as can be done, the natural habitat of the animals themselves. The bear had the large area to roam in now, of grass and trees and water, and plenty of food available. He was far enough removed from the zoo visitors that they couldn't harass him. And yet, so the story goes, for the remainder of his life, and in all the expanse he had to roam, the bear would never venture outside of an area more than 9 by 9 feet square.
A resurrection is not a resurrection if we cannot wake up to its happening. Whatever may have imprisoned or entombed us in the past can still retain its power to do so if we don't walk past it and beyond it. The Easter promise is that we do not have to be defined by a 9 by 9 foot cage, or by any other kind of cage that may be keeping up from being and becoming the human beings we're meant to be and capable of being. Whatever the metaphor may be, that is the message of this season and all the seasons of our lives. I hope you take it to heart.
Just one more little anecdote to send us on our way. I have to mention this somewhere today. I will long remember Good Friday of 1998 for this reason: I left a baseball game after eight innings with the team I was pulling for down by several runs and unable to touch the opposing pitcher. My son and I, both very tired, dozed in our seats on the train ride to where my car was parked. We drove home; had a bite to eat; he went to bed; I read for awhile and went to bed myself. We never even turned on the TV to check the final score. The papers on the following morning carried the front page story of a seven run resurrection in the bottom of the ninth. Boston 9, Seattle 7. It happened while we slept on the Green Line. Stay awake and stay tuned to life, my friends; resurrections can occur at the most unlikely of times. A happy and blessed Easter to each and all of you.
Copyright © 1998 by the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Nashua NH. All rights reserved.
