The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Salem, Oregon

WHEN WILL EASTER COME?

The Reverend Rick Davis

April 4, 2010

          Since the beginning of February I’ve been gazing out my office window at the indomitable daffodils shoots growing out of the fertile soil in front of our memorial garden soil.  I never doubted that they would grow and blossom, just as will our children, who planted them back in November.  Daffodils are among the first flowers to announce the coming of spring, and I love to see them, much like the poet Wordsworth who once saw a few million of them swaying in the breeze by a lake and wrote:  “And then my heart with pleasure fills/ And dances with the daffodils.”

          The coming of Easter, however, is another matter.  According to ancient testimony it started sprouting out of the soil, making its earthly appearance, about two thousand years ago in faraway Galilee , but I wonder if and when it will come to full blossom. 

          According to traditional Christian theology Easter came in full blossom with Jesus’ bodily resurrection and humankind’s role is to believe in this ancient miracle and admire the miraculous blossom at second hand through the eyes of faith.  That doesn’t work for me, nor I suspect, for most of you in this Unitarian Universalist setting.  To be blunt, I don’t believe in the literal, bodily resurrection of Jesus.  Does this make me a heretic?  Yes, I guess it does, which is why I have found my spiritual home here, where “heretic” (which simply means “to choose”) is not a term of derision but a badge of honor.

          Does that mean I think that Easter is this grand hoax, perpetrated upon credulous people?  Does it have any real bearing on our lives, even those who don’t consider themselves Christians?    Here’s my perspective. 

          When Jesus died on the cross it completely devastated his followers’ expectations.   Just a few days earlier he had made a triumphal entry into Jerusalem - adoring crowds laid down palm branches in his path, believing he was the Messiah, a benevolent monarch put on the throne by the ultimate God-father so that no one could ever knock him off.  

Such thinking is not unknown to us.  A similar theocratic vision is alive and well today – we see it among those who claim that the USA is a “Christian nation,” who want monuments displaying the Ten Commandments in Government buildings, and prayer in public schools, who stamp biblical citations on the gun sights used by our military in Muslim nations, who aim to abrogate the separation of Church and state, who dream of a time when Jesus will rule on earth, as promised in the book of the Revelation of John (a book that barely made it into the Christian Scripture and is more often than not, grossly misinterpreted by vengeful biblical literalists.) 

          That Jesus’ followers actually imagined that he was going to rule as a powerful earthly monarch speaks to how dull witted they could be.   They just didn’t get it.  After all his teaching, preaching and compassionate ministry, they still didn’t get understand that he wasn’t seeking power and control.  Nor, do those today, who yearn for America to be a “Christian nation.”  Sadly, for all of us, they just don’t get it. If Jesus taught anything it was that love does not take the way of coercive power and domination.   

I need to be careful about sounding so morally superior here, though.  I’m not immune to a yearning for the good guys to be in control;  it’s just that I have a different take on who the oppressors and the good guys are – for me the oppressors are not secular humanists and liberal elites or big government or the United Nations, but rather multi-national corporate kleptomaniacs and their ilk whose economic might invariably subverts true democracy and the common good. 

So it’s not hard for me to imagine how it must have felt for Jesus’ followers –  for as long as anyone can remember the oppressors have been in unjust, ungodly control.  Yet, now, finally!, complete triumph is at hand.  It’s payback time!  God almighty is putting his guy in command.  Now the good guys will be in control and there can be true justice and mercy and also – an added bonus -  the bad guys will get a taste of their own medicine.  

That’s what they expected.  Yet, instead of a triumph in Jerusalem , there was a complete, total disaster, as there usually is when the peasants try to overthrow the existing order.  The so called “Messiah” got nailed to a cross and his followers scattered like cowards.  Some triumph.  Greed, hate, indifference, brute force, worldly wealth and corruption prevailed once again.   The worst case scenario came to pass. 

Can you begin to imagine how Jesus must have felt up there on the cross, nailed between two common criminals with the mob that had cheered him a few days earlier now jeering and mocking him?  It’s an instructive spiritual exercise to try.  Forget for a moment the excruciating physical pain and imagine your psychological reaction to such cruelty and betrayal. 

When people intentionally hurt me it’s overwhelming.  If I can get past my utter shock and fear I experience pure rage toward those who have hurt, shamed and humiliated me, which in this case would be the Romans, Herod Antipas, their puppet on the throne, and the Sanhedrin (the priestly plutocrats who had such a sweet financial thing going at the Temple in Jerusalem which Jesus had threatened when he turned over the tables of the money lenders there.)

Don’t you feel outrage when injustice is done – when the rich and the powerful and the elites run roughshod over the poor and the powerless and you know and they know that they will get away with it?  The crucifixion was intentionally cruel so that it would strike fear in the hearts of any who might get any big ideas about challenging the existing order. 

On the other hand, I would not feel rage at my disciples but rather heartbreaking disappointment.  “You called me “Master,” you said you would follow me to the ends of the earth, and said you loved me and would never betray or desert me.  I thought you were my very best friends in the world, yet when the time came for you to prove your love and friendship you scurried like rats leaving a sinking ship.  What a disappointment you turned out to be.  Wasted the best years of my life with you.”     

In sum, I honestly imagine that hanging on a cross would not be my finest hour but my whiniest and most self pitying.

Jesus was human, too, and he said something very human at that most forsaken moment in his short life – “My God, My God.  Why have you forsaken me?”  (quoting Psalm 22)  But then, as he looked down upon that ugly scene of cruelty and cowardice he said some words, which, according to the usual psychological response of human emotions, do not make any sense at all.  He said, “Forgive them, God, they know not what they do.”

“Excuse me Jesus,” I want to argue – “they knew exactly what they were doing – the Romans, the Sanhedrin, the disciples.   They were adults – they need to take responsibility for their cruelty and greed and cowardice.”   And yes, perhaps they do, but  then I take an honest look at my own life and consider human nature in general.  When we act out of spite, malice, cruelty, greed, cowardice we tend to construct a self justifying narrative to excuse our behavior.  Or we abdicate free will and become mere cogs in vast political, economic, religious and societal systems of dehumanization – just obedient soldiers, workers, followers who follow the orders of those higher in the order.

Which is to say, Jesus was right.  If you are spiritually aware – that is, if your heart and your head are both fully engaged and you have an awareness of our essential interconnectedness – the Buddhist Master Thich Nhat Hanh calls it “interbeing” – you will NOT do hateful and hurtful things.  Why? Because your realize that your neighbor is yourself, that we are all part and parcel of one great sacred reality.   Yet if you aren’t truly aware, fully conscious, you won’t know what you’re doing.  Certainly, the ones who tried and convicted and crucified and betrayed and deserted Jesus didn’t know what they were doing.  If they had, they wouldn’t have done it.

Yet Jesus was aware of their lack of awareness – of how they lived in realms of fear, ignorance, bigotry, hatred, greed.  And seeing this, he knew not to take it personally; he transcended the emotional reactivity that keeps us trapped in cycles of hatred and vengeance.  With his clear spiritual vision he had compassion for those who did him harm, even in his hour of greatest travail.  And that is why Jesus issued that universal proclamation of forgiveness on the cross and in his ministry: “forgive them, they know not what they do.”  “Love your enemies.”

Five centuries before Jesus the Buddha had the same spiritual insight and issued the same proclamation in India when he preached “let none…despise any being in any state.  Let none through anger or ill-will wish harm upon another…with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings…radiating kindness over the entire world.”

But do you really want to do that?   It’s easy to love our friends and people who think like us and the poor and the neglected ones.  But do we want to relinquish ALL of our anger and hatred and ill will?  There are some folks in the world who are doing a lot of harm in my opinion and it’s hard not to harbor ill will toward our modern day versions of the Romans and Sanhedrins – the rich, powerful, brutal, greedy forces that inflict so much harm.  (Note: letting go of ill will does not mean ceasing to oppose injustice – Gandhi showed us you can do that work free of ill will for the oppressor)

Perhaps Jesus’ disciples had a hard time letting go of their ill will.  After the crucifixion of their beloved teacher they must have been filled with shame and anger and a profound sorrow beyond words.   But then, sometime after the brutal shock of his crucifixion waned, they began to see a light beyond the thick clouds of sorrow and despair – a light that grew brighter and burned away those clouds like a noonday sun dissipating a mere morning fog.  They felt that they experienced the presence of Jesus.  It’s easier to imagine that they experienced the same spirit of a universal, unconquerable love that animated Jesus – so of course they would think it was him.   Indeed, it was such a spiritual jolt that they interpreted it as a literal resurrection of their teacher.   This was not an original idea – the myth of the resurrected God was an established part of the ancient mythic landscape – so it was perfectly natural that the disciples and early Christians would clothe their profound spiritual experience in such a well known myth – it helped to explain a reality beyond their understanding.   After all, myths are not lies but representational clues to transcendent truths.  Speaking of the resurrection as a myth is not to disparage it but to exalt it. 

Few who study the early Christian history would contest that there was a resurrection of the Love that animated Jesus in the hearts of his disciples.   Such a resurrection could only occur after Jesus was gone because as long as he was among them they looked to him rather than within themselves.  Once he was gone, his followers and their followers discovered the same sacred spiritual source within themselves and they discovered a joy and love and a peace that passes understanding. 

That same force, that unconquerable love, lies within you.   It may be hard to believe because so many of us have had lives filled with too much hurt, heartbreak and humiliation.  Yet beyond the dark clouds of doubt and despair, there is a light within you.  Whether you and I choose to take the journey of faith and hope to discover that light is up to us.  But if you can see beyond experience it you will be transformed by it and your love will transform your corner of the world.  Easter will be here for you.  And when enough of us see it, a sublime love that transcends hate, fear, greed, cruelty will shine for all.