This Sunday we heard the ancient Easter story of the resurrection and how we as UU’s can find meaning in it. Please read the sermon below or listen to the complete service by clicking here.
The Easter story has often been diluted or even neglected in Unitarian Universalist circles. But as many of you know by now, I believe our faith calls us to wrestle with challenging questions. And the Easter story, this story that is central to the Christian faith, is probably the most vexing. Unitarian Universalism calls us into relationship with those who are different from us, including those who believe differently than we do. As we saw last Sunday in our recognition of the Jewish holiday of Passover, our search for truth and meaning requires us to seek out our own understanding of the faith traditions of others, and to discover their relevance to our lives. And so, for the next few minutes, I invite us to roll back the stone and to enter the tomb with me. To explore the Easter story in ways that we maybe haven’t considered, and to find meaning in this most holy of Christian days.
The first barrier to entry into the tomb isn’t the stone but the story. The miracle itself. Fundamentalist and literalist Christians will tell you that the bodily resurrection of Jesus is an historical fact. That it actually happened. And many use a belief in this miracle as the bright line test to determine one’s membership in the Christian faith. Either you believe in the Resurrection or you don’t. Author and theologian C.S. Lewis gave us but two choices: “You must,” he wrote, “accept or reject the story.”[1] When paired with our UU commitment to reason and rationality, this “all or nothing” approach to the idea that someone could die and then 3 days later come back to life stands as a seemingly insurmountable barrier to our entry into the tomb.
But a few years ago I happened to sit down with an Episcopal priest, a Presbyterian pastor, and a minister from the United Church of Christ. I know, it sounds like the start of a joke, right? But when we got around to discussing the Resurrection, you know what I found out? None of them believed in the literal truth of the story. Now, this wasn’t a surprise for me as far as the UCC pastor was concerned. I knew they were a liberal bunch and pretty closely aligned with Unitarian Universalism. But to hear these Christian faith leaders confess that, for them the Resurrection is symbolic and not literally true, was a revelation. I found the stone of my disbelief dislodge itself, just enough so that I could squeeze past it and enter the darkness of the tomb.
So if we can get past the factuality of the Resurrection, perhaps we are then free to discover the meaning in the story, the meaning behind the story. For example, we might consider this a story of both personal and cultural liberation. Consider the fact that Jesus, his apostles, and, later, the writers of the gospels were nothing less than revolutionaries. They lived in a country occupied by foreign forces that were unaware of and unsympathetic to their culture and beliefs. They were advocating new ideas, new ways of living, new relationships with one another that were alien not only to the Romans, but to the established local order as well. Their message was threatening and dangerous to the powers that were in place at the time. And Jesus was their ringleader. Their community organizer. Their Che, their Martin. And so, something had to be done about him, and it was. He was arrested and executed like a common criminal.
They killed the man, but something amazing happened: the movement carried on without him, beyond him. His survival beyond the grave was guaranteed by the truth of his message and the determination of his followers. And when, a generation or two after his death, the writers of the gospels wrote of his life, they made the man himself literally immortal. That immortality ensured that the movement would continue. In fact, it would flourish and spread around the globe. Through the story of Christ’s death and his resurrection, all those who struggle for freedom, for liberation from poverty, destitution and domination, can claim, or at least they can envision, ultimate victory over their oppressors. This is the Easter message that resonates so deeply with the poor in Central and South America, the source of what we call today “liberation theology.” Perhaps some of us here today, those of us who have been persecuted or oppressed simply for being who we are and how we are, can relate to this story as a story of liberation.
As I have wrestled with it, I’ve come to understand that the Resurrection carries for me a message that is at once even more personal and more universal. I am privileged not to live under conditions of poverty or political oppression, and thus I suppose I have the luxury to see it so. After what we’ve been through the past couple of years, I think it’s safe to say that everyone in this room has, at one time or another, experienced some kind of loss. Perhaps it was the death of someone we loved. Or the end of a relationship. Or the loss of our health or physical vitality. Or a career cut short. I would also suspect that, at one time or another, each of us has felt that we’d never recover from that loss. That something had died, literally or figuratively, inside of us. That our hearts or our spirits have been irreparably broken. That we’ll never recover. Never be the same again. That we are isolated and alone, trapped in a dark cave, a tomb, sealed off from the air we need to breathe and the light we need to thrive. Our lives are over. Maybe some of you in this room or online are there right now. If you are, please, know that you are loved, and that you are not alone.
The message of the Resurrection is simply this: we will return to life, and life will return to us. Easter tells us that the stone will be rolled back, often when we least expect it, and the light of life and love will once again shine in. The death and resurrection of Jesus is not some story from a distant land and an ancient time. It is a miracle that we live out in our own lives and our own time. Yesterday, today, tomorrow. It is our death and our resurrection. How it happens, or why or when, is incapable of being known. And yet it happens, over and over again. I have seen it happen to you, many of you with us today, and it has happened to me. Through the grace of God, through the powers of the universe, through unseen forces of mystery and miracle, we are saved, time and time and time again. We are brought out of death and into life, to live the life we have been given. Out of our brokenness we are somehow, miraculously made whole. We are reconciled and we are restored. We may not be exactly as we were before, but we move out of our death and into new life.
The Christian church claims that the death and resurrection of Jesus has sealed the promise of life everlasting. I don’t know about that. None of us knows about that, and we’ll find out if it’s true soon enough, doubtless sooner than we would hope. But of this I am certain: in our living we suffer countless deaths. But as long as we have breath, I am equally as certain that, out of each death, new life, life lived in abundance and wholeness, can and will emerge. This is the promise of the Resurrection.
Happy Easter, everyone.
[1] “The Strangest Story” in Bread and Wine, p. 265.