Reading:

Many a rock is pushed from the entrance of many a tomb by the force of the human spirit.

The rock is pushed away from the tomb of silence by the courage to speak when others hold their tongues and lose their conscience.

The stone of superstition and delusion is split in two by the clear thought of reason.

The boulders of dead habit, set in place by many years, are rolled aside by the quickness and newness of imagination.

The crags of inequality and selfishness are set astir by the piercing cry for justice,

The brick walls of indifference and callousness are eroded by a single tear of sympathy and cracked by the warm smile of kinship.

The dry gravel bed of vanished hopes is washed over by the waters of new possibilities.

Many a rock is pushed from the entrance to many a tomb by the force of the human spirit.

Homily:

Easter is a difficult holiday for many Unitarian Universalists. Because reasonably we don’t accept the fact that Jesus rose from the dead. And yet as I have come to understand, without the resurrection there is only Good Friday; only the message of suffering, which is why the Apostle Paul said that without the resurrection, faith in Jesus was meaningless. So the resurrection; Easter Sunday is necessary.  Thus regardless of our personal feelings about Easter, the Easter story and its understanding of suffering and redemption permeate our culture.

I personally have trouble with the story, at least as it has been interpreted today. Classical Christianity offers several explanations for why Jesus had to die on the cross.   The one I will concentrate on is called the “Satisfaction Tradition”, which is the idea that through the suffering of Christ, God will be reunited with humanity.

The Satisfaction Tradition began with the notion that because of sin, humanity owed a debt to God.  The debt could only be paid by the death of a pure being because a regular human would be tainted and thus only deserve such a fate. So wouldn’t pay off the debt. The sacrifice of Jesus paid the debt, God was satisfied and so all of humanity is saved.  This whole idea presents God as a tyrant who is only satisfied with the death of his son. Suffering becomes sanctioned as an experience that frees others, perhaps even God. This theology identifies love with suffering which is not a healthy message.

Some of you will laugh when you hear me next quote Friedrich Nietzche because you know Alex, my husband is working on a thesis on Nietzche and I sometimes tire of hearing of him. Yet Nietzche had an incredible insight into the death of Jesus in his book, The Anti-Christ.  After the crucifixion the disciples were very upset and wondered how their loving God could have allowed this to happen.  Nietzche says, “To this, the disturbed little community found a terrifyingly absurd answer: God gave his son for the forgiveness of sins, as a sacrifice. All at once the Gospel was done for!  The guilt sacrifice, and this in its most repulsive, most barbaric form, the sacrifice of the guiltless for the sins of the guilty! What ghastly paganism! – For Jesus had abolished the very concept of “guilt” – he had denied any separation between God and man (sic), he lived this unity of God and man (sic) as his “good news” … and not as a special privilege!”    The disciples reverted to what they knew and how they had previously believed the world worked.  Jesus and his teachings dissolved and disciples brought back their familiar world of sacrifice.  We all lean on beliefs from our past when we are scared and upset.

Jesus’ followers faced the death of their leader, their friend, their guide and teacher.  At a time in human history when life was pretty bleak and short he had given them hope and taught them new ways to live. He, or at least many of the stories and teaching attributed to him, pushed back the stones of exclusion and fear.  And now he was gone.  The disciples must have been terrified.

What if they and the interpreters since got this wrong? What if we reinterpret that event? What if we remember Jesus saying the Kingdom of God is all around us and freely available to everyone?  Then the message is not a message that we must all suffer but that in fact we all do suffer.  Then suffering is not something we must to do to be better people. Suffering is a reality not a requirement.  Suffering becomes part of the picture, not something necessary for salvation. Then the resurrection is the image we use to get through our suffering.  Somehow, we like the women who went to the tomb, find the rock and roll it back.  And perhaps reminiscent of Sisyphus the rock will have to be rolled back again and again.  In some ways Easter is the message of Jesus’ followers more than the Jesus himself.  They were the ones that had to go on. They were the ones that had to roll back the rock of disbelieve in both themselves and in others. They were the ones that had to carry his story from Good Friday onward.

When Ariana, my daughter, was about three, my sister’s cat died. Boo had been a fixture in my parent’s house for 15 years. I was worried about how she would understand that the cat was gone. So we took a walk and I tried to explain to her how we would all be sad because Boo was dead.  I told her that we would all miss him.  I talked with her about how we would take his body to the cottage and bury him. She said, “don’t worry mom. Only the part you can pet is gone. We can still remember him.”  Maybe the resurrection is the return of all the parts except the part we can pet.  Maybe after Good Friday, when death happens as it inevitably does, and we have mourned and suffered, the parts that haven’t died return. The parts that were in some sense always there are still there after death.  I guess that’s now what the story of the resurrection is for me. A story of how a people went on even though their beloved leader had died. Maybe as Nietzche suggests those that followed didn’t quite get it right, but still many of the wondrous features of the life of Jesus survive and inspire us today.

Most Unitarian Universalists believe Jesus was an extraordinary human spirit capable of pushing back many stones from the entrance of many tombs.  His preaching of the love of God healed many a broken person.  Yet we don’t believe he came back to life and walked on the earth again.  So I join in the Christian celebration of Easter with an understanding that Jesus did not truly rise from the dead, but that something was reborn when the rock was rolled back from the tomb. Easter is an amazing time of year. The resurrection is an amazing story.  For me it is a story of how a people managed to carry a story, a memory, and a teacher with them through time. As we struggle and suffer may we, too, carry the image of Jesus in our hearts; the image of a teacher whose essential lesson was love.  An image that can remind us we are all connected to the Great Spirit of Life.
 
 
 
 

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