"It was a brief but eventful life," wrote UU minister David Rankin, "He was conceived by a virgin, he was born in a strange town, he inherited a royal lineage, he escaped a mortal danger, he was tempted in the wilderness, he received a commission to rule the world, he performed extraordinary miracles, he was the victim of a cruel death, he disappeared from the burial vault, he descended into hell, he appeared to the women of the entourage, he ascended to heaven in a cloud, and the disciples waited for his triumphant return . . . His name: Herakles, the peasant demigod of Tarsus." 1
As I was driving my eight year old daughter to Little League yesterday morning, having just rolled out of bed with merely one of my usual two cups of coffee in me, she asked: "Mommy, Friday was Good Friday right?" "Yes" I answered. "What's Good Friday?"
Ok . . . keep driving . . . be calm . . . big question . . . answer with integrity . . . honor folk of differing beliefs . . . Go!
"Good Friday is when Christians observe the death of Jesus. He was killed because people were afraid of him. He was crucified, that's how they executed people in his time. He did not commit a crime, but they killed him anyway . . . It was very sad (pause . . . not good enough . . . can't leave it there). Easter, which is celebrated tomorrow, is an observance of what Christian's believed was Jesus' resurrection (there I go, typical parent over answering child's question . . . now this thing is hanging there and needs to be fleshed out) . . . resurrection is understood in many different ways (then I tuned into the radio with Celine Dion singing "My Heart Will Go On"). Basically it's about the fact that's Jesus' ministry did not die. His love carried on. His ministry will go on. Love does not die.
Now if anyone doubts that you can feel eternity in time, I testify that that two minutes felt like an eternity . . . and in some ways it was. A bubble moment when deeper truth is welcomed. For when I said Love does not die, a tear was rolling down my cheek, my daughter unaware and satisfied to wonder next about her softball game.
Ave verum corpus the choir sang. Praise the body, the presence, of truth. This is a hard year for hope. Seeing the devastation in Iraq and in pockets around the world, many wonder if life will rise from these ashes. Hearing the constant noise of analysis, it is hard to discern which is false hope from double speak justifications and which is the promise of new life within our good faith efforts to find better ways of being. It is confusing to hear that death brings on freedom when it is someone else's death for yet another person's freedom. It is daunting to consider the rebuilding of cities and citizenry all over the world when conflict and belligerence rule the day and narrow our vision.
And yet Easter is here. Spring has sprung. Each moment contains life and death. Regeneration happens even when we're stuck.
The Easter message is not about what really happened -- it's about what happens when we embrace the story told and told in many ways. Easter is about the hope that the listener feels about life and love everlasting. It's about what happens to us when we catch a glimpse of a universal truth, when we understand the transcending message within our awkward human rendering, when we honor our deep yearning to ennoble the enterprise of human being.
Another car story . . . they seem to be upon me this week. Friday I'm driving the kids to pick up medicine for pink eye. The car begins to indicate great engie distress. I make it to the Rite Aid and park the car, ready to call Triple A. One woman in a van atops to offer help. I let her know I'm having it towed and thank her. The clerk at the Pharmacy was generous with the phone and I arranged for a pick-up which arrived in ten minutes. As we were waving to the tow truck driver carrying our car away a man drives up "excuse me but could I be of some assistance?" I and my two under dressed children in 40 degree weather get into the car and are dropped off at a place where I could call my husband. The flow of unsolicited generosity was remarkable, but the last lift caught me a bit off guard. I was struggling inside with how I could repay this act of kindness, for clearly the man disrupted his plans to facilitate ours.
Then it hit me: Pay back is an illusion, it's an attempt to control love. Love flows regardless of my estimation of my worth. I am not in charge of how I'm loved. We are not in charge of being worthy of love. We set up tests and proofs and scenarios of our worthiness and project our estimation of that worthiness onto others. We create systems of acceptance and rules of intimacy. We honor what we can prove and what we think we can handle. We let guilt and fear keep us down, unaware, unable to reach beyond our spheres. The only way that I can "pay back" this act of kindness is to do it for someone else . . . not for the same person, for then it is to gain recognition, but for some unsuspecting person . . . not because I owe it to tthis man or the universe but because I am able to help generate the flow of loving kindness . . . "Into Your hands I commend my spirit."
Jesus did not die so that we could thank him. That's like thanking a waitress profusely for the well-served meal then leaving a 5% tip . . . there's more for you to do. Jesus did not die so that we could thank him. Jesus died because we weren't ready for his message of love. We killed him in fear. He died without fear, because he knew something so deep and so sure in his soul that most of us barely invite into our thinking. There is more to life than fearing death. There's more to life than controlling it. And yes, I am deeply grateful for such a radical life message, but it is not my job to stop there, it is my job to go and do likewise. Live to the fullest, love more than you can imagine, be your glorious, unique, transcendent self.
Jesus did not die so that we may live. He died so that he may live fully and in so doing his message became indestructable. Now we continue to do a good job trying to disable the truth by attempting to organize for all times in religion, through calling actions out of fear bravery, through claiming one way as being the only way or at least better than that way. We distract ourselves from the message when we make our worship about Jesus instead of with Jesus. We separate our abilities from his and let ourselves off the hook because of course we are not God and couldn't possibly attain the wisdom of peace. We create layers of justification and construct systems of denial protected by centuries of guilt. And yet, love remains, the sun shines on us, trees blossom, children are born, joy abounds, life goes on. The wisdom is ever available if we would simply get out the way.
"Father forgive them," reads the gospel of Luke as some of the last words heard uttered from Jesus' lips, "for they know not what they do"."
We were afraid, we still are, of unconditional love: of our own power to love and to live without fear. We are afraid of who we could actually be. We regularly douse the light within. We tried to destroy the light of this truth by ending Jesus' mortal life. It didn't work. We tried to close the chapter of his radical openness. It didn't work. Love defies boundaries. Love reaches beyond mortal constructions. The joy that sparked creation doesn't need our permission. It doesn't even need our praise. But it would thrive with our participation. We need to praise.
We could very well destroy ourselves. Life and love will go on with or without us. Why not be there . . . why not be there?
All the machinations, all the petty dramas, all the power struggles, all the ego dances are irrelevant. All the claims to "do something," to make it happen, to control its outcome misses the point. Jesus could have escaped, he could have fought back, he could have lied, he could have followed the political reasoning presented him. He chose the heart of life. He chose his integrity. He chose to love the world and the glory of his being by meeting adversity in tact and letting go of all temptation to control others. Jesus died so that he may live in the hearts of those who know his message and so, in turn that life, that wisdom, lives. That life, that wisdom, has been made manifest in many people who have walked this earth, not necessarily the flashy ones. Amazing, baffling, extraordinary courage. Something we all have if we could just believe it. "You are the light of the world."
When Jesus was said to have broken bread and passed around the wine at his final Seder, he gave his disciples a lasting gesture of fellowship: "Do this in remembrance of me," he offered, willing himself into the presence of loving community whenever invited by remembrance. One definition of resurrection is "a coming back into notice." The regenerative and healing power of life can come back into notice anywhere, by anyone, at anytime.
John Dominic Crossan, Catholic theologian, studies the historical Jesus. He writes: "resurrection is one -- but only one -- of the metaphors used to express the sense of Jesus' continuing presence with his followers and friends . . . If we use the prospect of eternal life to dull us to the present world and its injustices, we're wrong" he continues, "If there is not enough meaning in life that we must imagine having it in a future life, we're wrong . . . We make life. We make this world heaven or hell. So far, and in general, we have made it more hell than heaven. To put it in biblical terms: either we try to fashion the world in the image of the Kingdom Jesus envisioned, or we abandon it to the world's Caesars and Pilates." 2
In January of 1989, I had the opportunity to be a part of a Witness For Peace delegation to Nicaragua. Remnants of the contra war were still active and political rhetoric was still in full force, as sides were attempting to proclaim their rights to govern the land. We visited small towns, barrios, where politics were not directly discussed for fear of losing more medical, educational and even religious supplies or personnel. The politics were played out in the lives of these people -- you could see the damage that the war had done, the severing of family ties, the constant threat of death and disease, the common place loss of children and parents. Many of the poor had been scattered during the war and found themselves setting up communities with make-shift roads, shacks, no plumbing, limited electricity -- if any at all.
We were received by one such community in a barrio outside Jinotega for a few days. I and a friend were welcomed into the home of Thomasa, a woman caring for four children. Her husband, a soldier in the war, came by monthly with meager supplies and then would return to camp. Two of the children were Thomasa's, two were children of relatives who were even poorer than Thomasa, a situation I could not fathom. The shack we stayed in had visible cracks between the wood, an aluminum roof and dirt floor. Still Thomasa cooked us the rice and beans we brought and gave us the larger portions as is the custom. Still, she shared her coffee. Thomasa was twenty years old.
The community knew we were from the United States and they knew the United States was covertly involved in the contra war. They knew that vested political interests of the more powerful was what created the situation that they struggled with. They were caught in a war that they did not start and were losing loved ones for causes that rarely included them. And yet, the spirit of community was more powerful in Jinotega than I had ever experienced. The power of love was palpable. The hospitality overwhelming. Bonded simply by their insistence to affirm life and one another, this community created a home by acknowledging that they needed one another. Immanent death or loss helped them cherish life more readily, helped them understand that life is fragile and precious . . . but there was more . . . a kind of acceptance . . . a kind of freedom of heart that grounded this community in its determination to live, to survive the blows and continue on.
I remember one day being struck by how my country, in its apathy and gluttony, had affected the poor here. As I observed a farmer, speaking to us with hope and faith, I remember feeling overwhelmed by his generosity of spirit, by his bold forgiveness and his insistence on better ways of being. I could not fathom the depth of resources he had to find so much hope.
A group of children took us for a hike to their tallest peak to see the Buena Vista below. On our way back, we took a short cut through a graveyard. Half way through, I realized one of the children was missing. I turned around and this seven or eight year old was standing at a grave. I went to him. "My mother" he said, matter of fact and sad. "My father's over there," pointing to another grave. We stood in silence for a moment and then he went on to town. Watching him go, I then noticed the scores of graves surrounding me. I found out later that his mother had been killed three weeks before. And yet he had life in him, life that he clearly cherished. Life that had dignity and knew love. Life that did not deny the suffering.
A dedication to a traveling juggler who was killed stands in a park in Managua. It was designed by children and it reads: "They can kill all the flowers, but they can never kill spring."
The people we visited were not professional victims forgiving their abusers and enabling an unjust system. These were people who lived with dignity in spite of their circumstances and continuously worked to change their circumstances. The people I met in Nicaragua gave me the gift of understanding to claim dignity as a way to release the hold of power others may have over you. For resentment and revenge, guilt and blame, in the end, cripple the soul. And hope, well, hope, feeds the soul, indeed gives the soul life.
Don't underestimate your power to heal, to love, to forgive, to change your life with your next breath. Life is good. Let's make it so. Happy Easter. Amen.