One of our church school parents e-mailed me what has become the introduction to this Easter Sunday sermon, though she did not know it at the time. Her son's preschool teacher thought she should let the boy's parents know that his class has been studying Easter. In a class discussion one day, apparently the pre-schooler reported, "I don't really celebrate Easter because I'm not Christian. I think I'm African-American."
While we may think confusion over Easter is something for our children, Unitarian Universalist adults likewise have a hard time identifying the meaning of humanity's holy days and religious rituals. Why is it that Unitarian Universalists, who deny the historicity of the physical resurrection, find in Easter a special celebration? We expect an increase in attendance this particular Sunday. Why?
The fact that Easter is a spring festival is hardly accidental. The Jews celebrate the Passover in the spring, though we really don't know historically the dates of the exodus of the Hebrew people from Egypt or even if it really occurred. To be sure tradition has it that Jesus came to Jerusalem for that last fateful week to celebrate Passover. But scholars tells us that both these religious holy days were basically superimposed upon the pagan spring rites of the ancient world. Both religions were in stern competition with the pagan world - if you can't beat them - join them. And so we have spring, Passover, Easter - a blessed trinity of holy times and rituals.
There is, in fact, nothing very unique about the mythology of the resurrection - such stories were common in the first century of the Common Era. I remember hearing a Bible scholar at Harvard Divinity School say that Jesus must have hit a traffic jam ascending into heaven.
Protestant theologian Paul Tillich went even further as he questioned even the Easter story as "rather late and questionable, and there is no indication of it in the earliest tradition. Theologically speaking, it is a rationalization of the event, interpreting it with physical categories that identify resurrection with the presence or absence of a physical body. Then the absurd question arises as to what happened to the molecules which comprise the corpse of Jesus of Nazareth. Then absurdity becomes compounded into blasphemy.
Our leading 20th century Unitarian Universalist theologian, James Luther Adams, interprets Easter by telling a provocative story of the Greek gods having a party on the top of Mount Olympus. As they partied, they could see another god climbing up, staggering under the weight of a cross he was carrying. He reached the top and fell across the table. Needless to say he ruined the party. The fun-loving gods were replaced by a god who suffers.
What is the meaning of this for Unitarian Universalists? Is life a tragedy or a celebration, or some combination of the two; in which case, how do we find the balance? The meaning of Easter for us, I believe, lies not in endless and futile disputes over the resurrection, but in the deeper meaning of the relationship between the joy of Jesus' ministry and the tragedy of his crucifixion.
The consensus of scholars is that without the crucifixion - fact so far as we can tell - and the resurrection - a myth created by his followers - Jesus would have been a forgotten first century prophet. And that is too bad, because the story of the cross is only one part of the prophet from Nazareth. The tragedy of his death at the hands of the powerful tends to obscure the meaning of his life as a prophet whom "the people heard gladly." After all, Jesus' teachings constitute the "gospel" - which means - good news.
We tend to forget that the full meaning of tragedy is not simply the failure of human plans or the cruelty of fate. Tragedy grows out of the good. Tragedy is our human fate - the ultimate tragedy is that however much we love life, we die. Dramatically speaking, life is a tragi-comedy: we laugh, we cry, we live, we die. We are unique among the creatures, not because we will die, but because we know we will die. The birds, too, will die, but they chirp on in their ignorance. Knowledge of our finitude ought to be enough to make us miserable. But it also makes us glad because we know each day is a precious reprieve from non-being. Life is moving, but in its very passage we find our joy in being.
That is the irony of the human condition. We are born, strive mightily to achieve great ends, love deeply, suffer pain bravely - and for what? To die! No, to live! The irony of our human fate is that which has given us greatest joy when it is present, gives us greatest pain when it is absent. Without the joy of life, there is no tragedy in death. Life, I conclude, is a tragedy full of joy.
One of my esteemed ministerial colleagues once wrote a critique of the oft-used phrase - the celebration of life - calling it a bromide. "Religion," he wrote, "is more than a mindless jumping up and down about how super it is to be alive. I do not celebrate life when I pray at the graveside of a young mother or wait through with the despair of a family in a hospital emergency room. How inaccurate, unfeeling, even blasphemous.
"You don't uncork Champagne and shout hallelujah for life all the time. Sometimes you just try to endure it, in pain. Mature religion reminds us of an ethical dimension and a tragic dimension which the phrase 'celebration of life' does not contain. Commitment to a way of life and the capacity to endure what life does to us are surely as crucial as expressing our jollity at the ambiguous vitalities about us and within."
I was deeply disturbed by that essay. Clearly, he had a point - if the celebration of life is simply jollity and partying and partaking of the goodies of life, it is rather superficial happiness. But the celebration I have in mind is living life as a resounding YES to existence - not despite all the pain and suffering we experience - but with them as a part of the rich mix that makes life meaningful. Without the finality of death, life would be an eternal bore, because we would have it all the time. There would be no sense of urgency to live life with compassion, creativity, and conviction.
No, when I stand at the graveside, hold the hand of a suffering soul, listen to protests at the unfairness of existence, I still believe life is to be celebrated. Without our love for one another, without the joy of human health, without courage in the face of adversity, there would be no tragedy. As the prophet puts it, "the deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain."
Two weeks ago I saw GeVa Theater's presentation of Ernest Gaine's novel, A Lesson Before Dying, which I have also read - along with the rest of Rochester. It is the tragic story of Jefferson, a young black man in the South of the 1940's falsely accused of murder and sentenced to the electric chair. The young man's god-mother who had raised him, bitterly accepts his fate but wants him to face his execution like a man. He is unlearned, barely articulate, and without hope.
She finally persuades Grant, another young black man - a teacher - to visit him and teach him a "lesson before dying," that he might face his fate with dignity. While Grant is hesitant and resists such a responsibility, he takes it on. There are some fascinating encounters with the local preacher who is more concerned with Jefferson's soul after death, than his spirit during life. Gradually Jefferson discovers the joy in reading and writing - rejoices that there are those who care about him - begins to discover who he is - a person with what Martin Luther King, Jr., would call "somebodiness." He dies with courage and dignity.
It is a heavy play and a heavy novel. Yet there is a subliminal joy in both. Beneath all the injustice of racism there is the determined will to be free. In the face of inevitable death, there is yet something worthwhile in life - however short that life may be. There is - despite the fate that awaits Jefferson - a lesson before dying that is worth learning. His lesson was tragically brief. We are studying that lesson for a lifetime.
And so, Ernest Gaines, while making a powerful statement against racism and against the death penalty, is making an equally powerful statement that no matter what life has in store for us, there are life lessons worth learning.
A somewhat less dramatic illustration of the joy of life in the context of inevitable death was recounted by author E.B. White as he described his cancer-stricken wife Katherine "planning," as he puts it, "the planting of bulbs in her garden in the last autumn of her life. There was something comical yet touching in her bedraggled appearance. the small hunched-over figure, her studied absorption in the implausible notion that there would be yet another spring, oblivious to the ending of her days (which she knew perfectly well was near at hand), sitting there with her detailed chart under those dark skies in dying October, calmly plotting the resurrection."
That is what we are called upon to do - plot the resurrection - not the resurrection of the body in outer space - but the resurrection of the human spirit in inner space. We do it - we celebrate the joys of this life - in the sure knowledge that our days are numbered. Life, we know, is terminal. None of us will get out of it alive. And that is tragic, is it not? Or is it? Shall we then cease our celebration of life? Or shall we believe with Henry David Thoreau that "Surely joy is the condition of life"? Every day - despite the chirping of birds in the early springtime air, despite the brave little green stalks of crocuses poking their way toward the sun, despite the inevitable roll of the great spinning earth, despite the rhythmic changing of the seasons, despite the lengthening days and the warming sun - every day we are one day closer to our final meeting with fate.
And that would seem to be tragic - the thought of leaving these ecstasies may burden us with the finitude of our lives. But it also is cause for celebration. Spring won't take NO for an answer. While we are here there are delicious morsels of living to taste, and we do ourselves no favors by failing to taste them - we savor them all the more because we know the banquet is not endless.
Life is a tragedy full of joy. Even beneath the dark death of winter we know spring is about to explode. It comes with life and singing and also with the sure death that comes when the seasons cycle around the sun - for summer, fall and winter will follow inexorably.
We, too, will cycle through our seasons of the soul - and one day there will be no more springs for us. But now, spring beckons and we must not miss the chance to celebrate its coming - even though we know our springtimes are numbered. Because we know they do not go on forever, there is all the more reason to rejoice now, to become what I call "cheerleaders of the human spirit."
And so I leave you an Easter poem I wrote to sum up my feelings this Easter morning - to link the historical Jesus and the turning of the earth:
A tomb is no place to stay
Be it a cave in the Judaean hills
Or the dark cavern of the spirit.
A tomb is no place to stay
When fresh grass rolls away the stone of winter cold
And valiant flowers burst their way to warmth and light.
A tomb is no place to stay,
When each morning announces our reprieve,
And we know we are granted yet another day of living.
A tomb is no place to stay
When life laughs a welcome
To hearts which have been away too long.
return to main page