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Did You Know... that the CLF is now providing a live audio version of Quest? Visit www.clfuu.org/podcasts to learn more about this and to listen to a sermon!
Sabbatical plans Lorraine Dennis, CLF's Executive Director, will be on sabbatical this year from April 24-May 30th and from July 10th to September 5th. Iris Hardin, Membership Administrator, and Donna Dudley, Fiscal Administrator, along with the rest of the CLF's great staff, will work with Jane to assure that the office continues to meet your needs while Lorraine is away. If you have questions or concerns, please email the office at clf@clfuu.org or call 617-948-6166.
April Online Classes To register for these online classes (or others), go to the CLF website: www.clfuu.org/learn.
Our Way of the Spirit Taught by the Rev. Roy Phillips and Ms. Linda Giesen Starts April 17th and runs six weeks This course uses texts from our Unitarian and Universalist history to invite participants into dialogue with the great thinkers of our liberal faith as they explore their own beliefs.
This I Believe: A Writer’s Journey taught by the Rev. Amanda Aikman Starts April 26th and runs six weeks In online sessions and intensive between-session writing exercises, participants will develop a multi-layered statement of personal belief, emphasizing story-telling about love, work, justice, nature, and encounters with the Holy.
BY HILARY LANDAU KRIVCHENIA, MINISTER, UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST CHURCH OF LAFAYETTE, INDIANA
Listen to this sermon to the Quest sermon podcast
What a feast this religion has to offer—a feast for the whole person—body, soul, mind, and heart. Often we Unitarian Universalists are people who seek this religious home because we're hungering for that feast and don't want to settle for what we experience as tasteless morsels. I keep struggling with nourishment as a religious topic, about what we seek and what we share. What are our deepest hungers—the ones which when fed will satisfy and transform?
I was a vegan caterer for a couple of years many years ago. Before that I had worked in a macrobiotic restaurant. So I have long asked: What is truly both nourishing and delicious? What has just enough complexity of flavor to awaken the senses without overpowering? And, most importantly, what nourishment is it that will energize our beings? What nourishment is it that will give us what we need to live full and deeply?
It is a terrible thing that we live in a world that creates hungers that cannot be sated—cannot be sated because they are illusions.
This question of what is both nourishing and delicious is keenly on my mind right now because April is the month of Passover this year, and this holiday—so centered on food and the hunger for it—has been an active part of my life since early childhood. Let me share with you some of the nourishment this ancient celebration holds for us as Unitarian Universalists.
Passover is a feast and a ritual. The food is cooked and served rich with meaning. This holiday is a time to spend with family and friends—it is a ritual of great sharing. It is a time to be aware of connection and of belonging and to remember that the deepest of life's lessons are learned in the midst of living, of eating, of singing. Passover is held in the home, although it is often shared by Unitarian Universalist congregations. And the rituals of remembrance are centered around children—the Seder is a time to continue teaching the children the value of community, to teach the depth of history, to teach the right to ask questions, and above all to teach the difference between imaginary hungers and real ones.
When we gather at the table there is a powerful feeling of connectedness with everyone around the world who is gathering at the same time—or during the same cycle of days. We are welcomed into an extended sense of community, of remembering who we are because we are connected. This is not a solitary ritual—it must be shared to be meaningful. The heart of the Seder is remembering—not only remembering an ancient story but remembering and finding connections across miles as well as years, across differences as well as across kinship. Connection is the first nourishment of Passover.
As I'm sure you know, at the Seder table the Haggadah is opened and the story of the Exodus is told. And you may also know that there isn't just one Haggadah—this is a story that is told from many perspectives by many people. I've attended vegan Seders where we hold in our hearts the suffering of animals. I've attended lesbian and gay Seders where we cherish the memory of those who are oppressed because of their love. I've attended feminist Seders where the reminder is not only of the oppression of women but of the leadership of women that has been unsung in the past. Every Seder seems to call forth as much history as it can—the Holocaust, Stonewall, the silent spring.
The Haggadah, which means narrative, is one of the most powerful stories of all time—one which has sustained oppressed people and inspired freedom movements. Generations of people have heard their own freedom calling in this story. So as the Haggadah is recited, those who are gathered listen to hear their own story in it and then write their own contribution to the ongoing narrative of history. The short version, as it is told around the table, is this: once we were slaves, but now we are free. But that's the short version—the long version is considerably more controversial; it is the story of an angry God who punishes innocents and grants freedom for a blood price.
The story comes from the Hebrew Bible, a book like any other book, filled with the richness of human experience and open to inquiry. This sacred text is another place where Judaism and Unitarian Universalism meet again and again—for we always have the right and, in fact, the responsibility to question and wrestle with the story, to use it as a warning and not as an unexamined celebration. This story is too brutal to celebrate, that God too vengeful and cruel. But we don't have to honor those awful acts. We need to ask questions, to ask ourselves to wrestle, again and again, with good and evil. We need to see how good and evil are intertwined, sometimes horribly, in the way this story of liberation is told. We were slaves and we were delivered, and we sit today enjoying the fruits of that deliverance; this is the occasion for us to ask ourselves how we will do better.
The Seder is, in part, about teaching the children to ask questions, and so the youngest child who can read asks four questions. The content of the questions is less important than the vital fact that there must be questions. Chaim Stern in the Gates of Freedom Haggadah says: "Asking leads to liberation, and the right to ask is the primary means to the liberation of mind and soul. The ability to question is a precious gift: this, parents must nurture in their children." I agree with Rabbi Stern that wisdom and critical thinking grow best in the presence of questions. Insight grows from the questions. Rabbi Abraham Heschel put it this way: "Two sources of religious thinking are given us: memory and personal insight. We must rely on our memory and we must strive for fresh insight." Passover is equally about these two.
Just so, the flourishing of the community requires a balance of memory and fresh insight. Both are sources of deep power and strength, but both can also be sources of great error and weakness. Unitarian Universalist religious education recognizes this, for it is our goal to encourage minds who like to think rather than minds who think alike. To come of age in our tradition is to reach that time when you can ask the tough questions, when you can join a congregation because you decide to, when you can contribute to the community with your own fresh insight. Fostering memory and insight is a further nourishment of the Seder. It makes the rest of the story one of hope and new life rather than of slavish wandering.
The ancient children of Israel were given their freedom only to find it lying useless in their hands. Freedom is an easy word to say. We Unitarian Universalists—members of a free church and of a free faith—use it often and claim it proudly. When we look more deeply, though, we realize that this word carries many different possible meanings:
Freedom to choose Freedom to think Freedom to love Freedom to do anything I want Freedom to buy anything I want Freedom to breathe Freedom from harm, from oppression, from coercion Freedom to choose my work Freedom to choose my spouse Freedom to raise a child in safety and health So many different possible uses that all of them—or any but the easiest—can be blurred and lost.
Desmond Tutu wrote:
Liberation is costly. Even after the Lord had delivered the Israelites from Egypt they had to bear the responsibilities and difficulties of freedom. There was starvation and thirst and they kept complaining. They complained that their diet was monotonous. Many of them preferred the days of bondage and the fleshpots of Egypt.
They had lived so long as slaves that the exercise of freedom was too new and unaccustomed. A new generation had to be born that knew freedom from birth. The exercise of freedom can't be developed rapidly under pressure—like any huge shift it must be cultivated over time. To be nourished by freedom we must understand that it is a meal we make for ourselves every day.
True freedom fills the soul—and leaves little room for false hungers.
But the Seder also makes use of hunger. I remember so many Seders when I'd sit hungrily eyeing the hard-boiled eggs on the platter. Even the parsley. What I wouldn't have given for an extra egg to carry me through. But the hunger itself is part of the learning of the Seder—part of the communion. As a child it is hard not to get the message: If they endured slavery, can I not endure hunger for a couple of hours? The hunger is shared as much as the food. Perhaps more, for it is said at every Seder: "Let all who are hungry come and eat, let all who thirst come and drink." The door is left open for the prophet Elijah, who is said to be the herald of redemption and reconciliation. These days there may also be a cup for Miriam, who led the people singing into freedom. The Seder is a time to celebrate comfort and freedom while remaining mindful of all who hunger and are oppressed—of all who thirst and yearn for freedom. The nourishment of community is expanded to include those who cannot sit down at the table. The Seder is a meal to be shared, just as freedom is a gift to be extended.
Finally, after a night of singing and storytelling, after fasting and feasting, after memory and insight, everyone says "Next year in Jerusalem ." But what is this Jerusalem, this place that is sacred to so many, but which has such violence embedded in its history? The New Jerusalem can't be a place on the map with streets and stores – or if it is any place on the map it must be every place—every sacred inch of earth. The New Jerusalem must be a place where all the stories can be held in memory, where all are part of the community, where all the children ask questions, where all true hunger can be shared and then satisfied. The Seder is and should be an open invitation: May all who are hungry come and eat. May all who thirst come and drink. May all who yearn for freedom find those who will stand with them in the struggle. The New Jerusalem can only come to pass when the celebrations of freedom are both nourishing and demanding—when they offer us sustenance and strength and challenge us to use that strength for all.
Unitarian Universalism is the ground we stand upon together. We are diverse—Unitarian Universalist but also Christian, Jewish, Hindu, humanist, Muslim, Buddhist, pagan…many visions and many origins meeting in this place. The Passover that we would share says that the New Jerusalem is a place in each of us and in all of us. It is the place where all of our traditions meet, where they find agreement and mutual affirmation, where we find allies for the journey and helpmeets for the labor. That is the true holy ground where we seek freedom, peace, and true nourishment for all. Next year may the New Jerusalem be here and every place on earth.
BY LYNN UNGAR, MINISTER FOR LIFESPAN LEARNING, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP
The story goes something like this: three women are walking down the road on the morning following the worst week of their lives. Their teacher, their friend, the person they depended upon to lead them into a better world has been brutally murdered. If you remember the day after Dr. King was shot, or the day after JFK was assassinated, if you can imagine what that horror must have been like as someone there in the bloody midst: a wife, a mother, a beloved comrade-in-arms, then maybe, just maybe, you can have some sense of how these women were feeling.
The three women, whose names happen to be Mary and Mary and Salomé, are on their way to the crypt where the body of their beloved teacher has been interred, carrying the materials for one final act of love, preparing the body for burial. It's probably not safe for them to be going. After all, this man has just been executed as a dangerous revolutionary. They don't even know how they will get to the body, since a great rock covers the entrance to the crypt, too heavy for them to roll away. But when they get to the cave where the body was placed, the rock is rolled away from the entrance, and the body is gone.
The way the story is told—at least one of the ways that the story is told—what they find, rather than the racked and bloodied body of their friend, is a mysterious man. This strange young man tells them that their friend is gone, is already ahead of them on the road to Galilee, and that they will meet up with him there. Not surprisingly, in bewilderment and terror, and with perhaps an unwillingness to let in the hope that the impossible is true, the two Marys and Salomé run away and agree that they will tell no one what they have seen.
It is, of course, a miracle story. The man who was brutally killed is reborn, comes back to chat with his friends, to walk with them and eat with them. It's at the heart of the Christian tradition, this miracle of resurrection, the literal revivification of Jesus.
Our Unitarian heritage has, over time, pretty much dismissed this miracle. We are disinclined to believe that a body that has been dead for three days would resuscitate itself. As rational UUs, our heroes are people like Clara Barton, who accomplished great feats of healing through the plain human hard work of nursing the ill, caring about conditions of sanitation, and founding what became the Red Cross. We are solidly linked to the Enlightenment tradition of philosophers like David Hume, who argued that since sensible people base their opinions on the weight of evidence, and since miracles, by their very nature, go against the strong evidence of the generally applicable laws of nature, the sensible person will not believe in miracles, as the evidence against them will always be greater than the evidence that they exist. We are the heirs of Thomas Jefferson, who created his own version of the Christian Scriptures by cutting out all of the miracle stories, leaving only the "pure" Christianity of the teachings of Jesus. As Unitarians we are the direct descendents of transcendentalist Theodore Parker, who argued that the miracles of the Christian Scriptures were essentially irrelevant insofar as their purpose was proving the miraculous nature of the Christ. The teachings of Christianity, he argued, must be true in their own right, and must not depend on the authority of the man who revealed them any more than the truths of geometry depend on the personal authority of Euclid .
I am inclined to agree. You can't prove that the rabbi Jesus was a unique and divine savior because believers claim the miracle of his resurrection.
But I have a perverse desire to come at the argument from another side. After all, Jesus is not the only person, even within the Christian Scriptures, who is supposed to have come back to life. I can't say that any of them really resurrected, but then again, I can't say for sure that they didn't. What if the reason you can't use miracles to prove Jesus' uniqueness is not that miracles can't happen, but that they happen all the time, to quite ordinary people?
What if, as UUs, we were not so quick to dispense with the notion of miracles? After all, our faith tradition goes back just as solidly to Univeralist George DeBenneville, who believed that the truth of universal salvation was revealed to him by angels in the course of a near-death experience, and to Universalist John Murray, who was led by either miraculous intervention or by a series of really amazing coincidences from an English prison to the door of an American who was looking for a Universalist preacher. What if the miracles were, in some sense of the word, "real"?
This is not to say that I've given up my rational Unitarianism and am ready to swallow the idea of the miraculous lock, stock and barrel. I am leery of miracles and angels as the subject of TV shows, and impatient with miraculous images of Jesus appearing on tortillas or car fenders. After all, how do we know what Jesus looked like? I have a hard enough time recognizing people I've met when I bump into them at the grocery store. You can just bet I wouldn't have a clue whether someone were Jesus or not if I happened to see a face in the clouds. Besides, what seems to be our society's current obsession with miracles often feels a little too close to the American need for a quick fix. Got a problem? Just stand back and God or your guardian angel will fix it up in a jiffy, whether you need a parking place or a medical cure. Whatever miracles may be, I am sure that they do not take the place of the day-to-day work of dealing with reality as we know it. I am charmed by the story of the Buddha meeting someone who declares that he has practiced meditation for twenty years and now can walk on water. Buddha says, "Why didn't you just pay three rupees and take the ferry across?" Maybe, like the Buddha, or like Theodore Parker, we need to step outside of the argument as to whether miracles "really" occur, and wonder, instead, what the events of life—however prosaic or strange—might have to say.
Any miracle worth its salt, as far as I'm concerned, provides an invitation not to wallow in spookiness, but to turn to a deeper, more aware engagement with the things of this world. I am very much in sympathy with Walt Whitman, who says "Why, who makes much of a miracle? As for me, I / know nothing else but miracles..../ To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle. / Every cubic inch of space is a miracle."
The Greek of the New Testament refers to miracles by two words that are most accurately translated as "signs" and "wonders." A miracle is something that points beyond itself, and that inspires wonder, or awe. In some sense, then, the presence of miracles in the world depends on our willingness to find meaning and wonder in what we see. Whether or not Jesus' body came back to life, the fact that people around the world feel him as a healing, loving presence in their lives, a voice for justice and a witness for peace, is miracle enough for me. "There are only two ways to live your life." wrote Albert Einstein. "One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is."
And why not live in a world of miracles? George Howe Colt writes in an article in Life magazine about talking with someone who runs "angel awareness" seminars and teaches people to watch for subtle clues: pennies on the sidewalk, feathers in the air, the tinkling of bells, the flickering of lights. While acknowledging his skepticism, Colt also responds, "It feels pleasant to be on alert for angels—as opposed to, say, muggers." As with angels, I suspect that it feels better to be on the look out for miracles than for muggers. As Colt says, "the idea that serendipitous details of daily life might be tell-tales of some larger presence is alluring."
Why not live in the presence of that allure? The Easter story, in all its grimness and glory, is, after all, a sign and a wonder. It is a pointer toward the saving conviction that even when life is tragic, when difficulties feel insurmountable, there is still hope that the irreparable might be, in some unforeseen way, repaired. In the most unexpected ways, miracles turn us from death toward life.
UU minister Rebecca Parker, in her book Proverbs of Ashes, tells this story of a terrible time after she chose to abort a much-wanted pregnancy when her husband decided that he could not cope with parenthood, only to lose the relationship as well as the pregnancy. She writes:
Everything I most loved had slipped out of my hands. I felt there was nothing left to hold on to—not my marriage, not my child, not my faith. I spiraled into grief and self-directed anger. One night I came to the end of my will to live. I just wanted the anguish to stop. It was a cold, clear night. I lived at the top of a hill above a lake and sometime after midnight I left my house and started walking down the hill. The water would be cold enough. I could walk into it, then swim, then let go, sink down into the darkness and go home to God. The thought was comforting. I had no second thoughts. I was set on my course. At the bottom of the hill, I had only a small grassy rise to cross before I came to the water's edge. I crested the familiar rise and began the descent to the welcoming water when I was caught short by a barrier that hadn't been there before. It looked like a long line of oddly shaped sawhorses, laid out to the left and to the right, the width of the grassy field. In the dark I couldn't see a way to get around either end, but it looked like I could climb over the middle. I quickened my pace, impelled by the grief that wouldn't let go of me. As I got closer, the dark forms before my eyes seemed to be moving. I squinted to understand what I was seeing. The odd bunchy shapes were a line of human beings bundled up in parkas and hats. The stick shapes weren't sawhorses. They were telescopes. It was the Seattle Astronomy Club. Before I could make my way through the line, one of them looked up from his eyeglass and, presuming me to be an astronomer, said with enthusiasm, "I've got it focused perfectly on Jupiter. Come, take a look." I didn't want to be rude or give away my reason for being there, so I bent down and looked through the telescope. There was Jupiter, banded red and glowing! "Isn't it great?" he said. It was great. Jupiter was beautiful through the telescope. I couldn't kill myself in the presence of these people who had gotten up in the middle of a cold night, with their home-built Radio Shack telescopes, to look at the planets and the stars. The beauty of the night sky, the dew wet grass at my feet, and the Seattle Astronomy Club kept me in this world. It would be wrong to think of this moment as one in which joy triumphed over despair, good came out of bad, or love of life defeated desire for death. I did not defeat negative feelings of anguish and despair because I saw something more lovely and good. My heart was still breaking with grief, but I became able to feel more. I was able to place that grief within a larger heart, within a wider embrace that could hold sorrow and joy, loss and illumination, death and life.
Everything I most loved had slipped out of my hands. I felt there was nothing left to hold on to—not my marriage, not my child, not my faith.
I spiraled into grief and self-directed anger. One night I came to the end of my will to live. I just wanted the anguish to stop. It was a cold, clear night. I lived at the top of a hill above a lake and sometime after midnight I left my house and started walking down the hill. The water would be cold enough. I could walk into it, then swim, then let go, sink down into the darkness and go home to God. The thought was comforting. I had no second thoughts. I was set on my course.
At the bottom of the hill, I had only a small grassy rise to cross before I came to the water's edge. I crested the familiar rise and began the descent to the welcoming water when I was caught short by a barrier that hadn't been there before. It looked like a long line of oddly shaped sawhorses, laid out to the left and to the right, the width of the grassy field. In the dark I couldn't see a way to get around either end, but it looked like I could climb over the middle. I quickened my pace, impelled by the grief that wouldn't let go of me. As I got closer, the dark forms before my eyes seemed to be moving. I squinted to understand what I was seeing.
The odd bunchy shapes were a line of human beings bundled up in parkas and hats. The stick shapes weren't sawhorses. They were telescopes. It was the Seattle Astronomy Club. Before I could make my way through the line, one of them looked up from his eyeglass and, presuming me to be an astronomer, said with enthusiasm, "I've got it focused perfectly on Jupiter. Come, take a look." I didn't want to be rude or give away my reason for being there, so I bent down and looked through the telescope. There was Jupiter, banded red and glowing! "Isn't it great?" he said. It was great. Jupiter was beautiful through the telescope.
I couldn't kill myself in the presence of these people who had gotten up in the middle of a cold night, with their home-built Radio Shack telescopes, to look at the planets and the stars.
The beauty of the night sky, the dew wet grass at my feet, and the Seattle Astronomy Club kept me in this world.
It would be wrong to think of this moment as one in which joy triumphed over despair, good came out of bad, or love of life defeated desire for death. I did not defeat negative feelings of anguish and despair because I saw something more lovely and good. My heart was still breaking with grief, but I became able to feel more. I was able to place that grief within a larger heart, within a wider embrace that could hold sorrow and joy, loss and illumination, death and life.
What Rebecca experienced was the miracle of resurrection, of being born again in that way that all people can be resurrected and born again. A miracle, contrary to popular understanding, is not something supernatural, something outside the world that breaks through in a burst of glory. A miracle is something that connects us back to the world, which reminds us that we are part of that astounding complexity, that we are part of that larger heart, that wider embrace. A miracle is something as ordinary as the Seattle Astronomy Club, as grand as the glowing planet Jupiter. A miracle is something that, in spite of all odds, in spite of all betrayals and terrors and crucifixions, allows us to live.
Note: Rebecca Parker's book Proverbs of Ashes , the source of the story of the Seattle Astronomy Club, is published by Beacon Press, and is available from the CLF library (www.clfuu.org/library or 617-948-6150) and the UUA Bookstore (www.uua.org/bookstore or 800-215-9076).
If you would like to represent the Church of the Larger Fellowship at General Assembly this year, there's still time. The CLF is entitled to have 22 delegates at the General Assembly in St. Louis, Missouri from June 21 to 25, 2006. You'll be able to attend workshops, concerts, programs, and worship services galore, while meeting Unitarian Universalists from near and far. And, of course, as a delegate you will be able to vote during plenary sessions. You can meet our minister, the Rev. Jane Rzepka, and the CLF staff, too.
Our delegates are asked to attend the CLF Annual Meeting and the CLF Worship Service and to work a minimum of three hours in the CLF booth. We also ask that you write a short report of your experience at General Assembly. If you'd like to participate in GA 2006, call the CLF at 617-948-6166 and speak to Lorraine, or e-mail us at clf@clfuu.org to indicate your interest. Visit the UUA's GA Web site at www.uua.org/ga for details. In their reports, here's what a couple of our members said about their experiences as delegates last year:
This was both my first year at a General Assembly and as a delegate. I honestly didn't know what to expect. …To make a long story short, I came back from GA with a renewed sense of commitment to UUism. The plenaries were educational. It was nice to be a part of voting on some of the issues our denomination considers important: to actively and directly participate in our principles of democracy. I appreciated that opportunity. Sunday morning's service was both an emotional and inspirational experience. The message and the music throughout were absolutely wonderful! There were times I felt like I was in an old-time gospel service. I couldn't stop smiling, I was filled with so much joy.
David Labby Natchitoches, Louisiana
GA has been a Mystery in the best sense for me. What is the love and dedication behind the work to set it all up and make it run smoothly? What touches all the hearts and opens all the wallets to bring thousands of people from literally all 50 states and several other countries together? What magic makes it happen and makes it moving? I don't know, and I don't think it matters. The feelings are real and present.
Louise Hornor On the road, USA
BY JANE RZEPKA, SENIOR MINISTER, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP
Listen to this sermon to the "From Your Minister" podcast
Most Quest readers were not raised in the Church of the Larger Fellowship. Some were, but the rest of you came to this religious home from someplace else. As the spring holidays approach, I imagine your backgrounds and experiences and how you relate to Easter. Some of you come from the Jewish tradition, and Easter seems either beside the point or a downright imposition. Others of you spent these holidays in Unitarian or Universalist or UU sanctuaries, experiencing a Christian perspective, perhaps, or Humanist, or a broad-based inclusivity, and for you the holidays range from "no big deal" to one of the year's major highlights. Others of you have entirely secular backgrounds, or you were raised outside the Western tradition, and you may or may not have particular feelings one way or the other. The vast majority of CLF members were raised Protestant or Catholic or Orthodox, and for you Easter carries a charge that plays itself out in a vast array of positive, negative, or mixed emotions.
Almost all of you have a prior relationship with a man called Jesus. Some of you pray to him or relate to him as your friend. Some of you grew tired of hearing about him as children or live in a geographical area of constant Jesus-chatter, and you don't want to hear another word about him. Some of you are angry at Jesus, or angry at the churches you associate with him. For some of you Jesus is God. He may be your teacher or your role model. For most of you, Jesus is a part of your childhood and he is alive in your memories. He may arise from the depths of your psyche in the middle of a long dark night, or he may figure in your decision-making day-to-day. For many of you, Jesus is a central figure at Easter time, present for you by virtue of your upbringing, in the customs and smells and burdens and delights of the Easter season.
What does your 2006 relationship with Jesus look like? What comes to mind when Jesus is mentioned? Where to begin?
Jesus was a Galilean Jew. Most men had beards at the time; Jesus probably did too. Many men wore their hair long in a braid down their
backs—maybe that's what Jesus did. We would expect him to have had dark hair, dark eyes. He would have eaten with his hands from a common bowl, as dishes were expensive. He no doubt wore his clothes many days in a row. He would not have brushed his teeth. Ordinarily, the men of his time did not talk with women in public, and men danced with men, and women with women. Their life expectancy was 37 years.
We have no reason to believe that Jesus thought himself to be the Messiah, the Savior, the Lord, or in any way divine—these were ideas later ascribed to him by his followers. He is silent as well, scholars say, on the subjects of heaven and hell, resurrection, the end of the world, the last judgment, and angels.
Most Unitarian Universalists find it easy to imagine this kind of human Jesus. But at this time of year, we don't get off quite so easily, because the resurrection shows up on our calendars on Easter Day. What are we to do?
You may find it interesting to take a look at the Book of Mark, the earliest of the four gospels in the Christian Scriptures, written about 70 years after Jesus' birth. It's a compilation of the oral tradition that already existed about Jesus.
In Mark, Jesus is crucified, and after the Sabbath, Mary Magdalene and Mary set off to find his body to anoint it: "As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here.'"
Scholars agree that the true book of Mark ends with the women fleeing in terror (Mark 16:8). The two Marys don't tell a soul, and Jesus never shows up again. Wow!
Imagine if the early Christians had let that story stay in print as it was first told, ending as it did in a frightened failure of nerve.
It took a couple hundred years, but finally someone did add another twelve verses to the Book of Mark. Now, at the end of the story, Jesus appears again as if he were not dead.
Some people think that resurrection has to be about the resuscitation of a corpse. Of course not. Dead people don't come back to life. At least that's not our kind of story.
For us, it's like this: We know that when something as wonderful as the message of Jesus comes along, in real life it does not die forever. The message comes back to life. We know that when goodness, and righteousness, and love emerge in the midst of humanity, they continue to rise up and come back to us. We know that hope does not die; hope comes back to life. And so it was with Jesus in the story. It was as if he were not dead. That's the kind of story that can grab us and hold us. That is resurrection.
Listen to this article to the "REsources for Living" podcast
The other day my daughter asked me, "Do we celebrate every holiday?" Sometimes it can seem like we Unitarian Universalists do try to celebrate every holiday that comes along. If you look at our KidTalk web page (www.clfuu.org/kidtalk) you'll find a whole list of holidays each month with web links for how you might want to celebrate them. And if you look at this issue of Quest, you'll see about equal attention to Easter and Passover. We're just a celebratin' group of people.
But no, Mattéa, we don't celebrate everything. For one thing, there are so many different cultures and religions in this world that if we tried to celebrate every holiday we'd run out of time for things like school and work and brushing our hair. For another, for all its being fun, celebrating holidays is kind of serious business. The word "holiday" comes from "holy day," so a holiday is something special, sacred. I happen to believe it's just fine for UUs to celebrate all kinds of holidays, to honor and take pleasure in the ways that people of different cultures and religions mark the special times. But we should also remember that these times are, well, special, and that if we are going to celebrate a holiday we should learn enough about its meanings and stories and customs to do it justice. That doesn't mean that there is one right way to celebrate any holiday, any more than there is one right answer to big questions of life like what happens after we die. And it doesn't mean that in order to celebrate a holiday you have to share the majority religious beliefs of the religion that the holiday belongs to. Plenty of people celebrate Easter without thinking that Jesus actually, physically, arose from the dead. And plenty of people celebrate Passover without thinking that the Jews are the one group of people that God chose to have a special relationship with. But it helps to know where these beliefs fit into the celebration.
The fact of the matter is that there is a tremendous variety to the way we humans see the world, and this variety shows in the stories we tell that help us make sense of it. If we want to honor holy days, then we need to come at our celebrations with knowledge of the different stories and what they might mean about different ways we see the world. Last March the REsources column was all about the Easter story, and the April REsources column last year was all about the Passover story, so I won't spend a lot of time here retelling those stories, since you can read my versions in the online archives (www.clfuu.org/quest and click on archives). But while we're honoring our differences, we can also appreciate the ways in which the world's celebrations are tied together by experiences we all share.
Passover and Easter, for instance, seem like very different celebrations: Passover is a story about a group of people escaping slavery and forming a community based on their relationship with their God. Easter is a story about a man who is killed for his teachings, but whose life in some way continues after he is gone. It doesn't seem like they have much in common (aside from the fact that the Easter story happens in a time and place where people were celebrating Passover). But both of these stories, which go back for thousands of years (2000 for the Easter story, much longer for the Passover story), are celebrated in ways that honor a much, much older story of life—the coming of spring. At the Passover Seder we eat hardboiled eggs and parsley or other green herbs, symbols of spring and new life. At Easter we celebrate by decorating eggs and keeping watch for a magical bunny...symbols of spring and new life. Easter celebrates a man who seems dead, and yet who turns out to be alive, if only in the way that ideas and relationships live on after we're gone. At Passover we celebrate a group of people who were dead to the world, dragging through a life of slavery and oppression with no thought of resistance, who gradually came alive to the possibility that their lives could be something more. Both are stories of things that seem impossible, stories of miracles. Perhaps we tell them at this time of year because each year we see what seems impossible coming true. Trees that are nothing but bare, dead-looking branches sprout flowers or leaves. Plants that had died back to nothing suddenly reappear from the earth. Dark mornings become dawn, and then full daylight. New life, new possibilities.
It's a story we all know, but I never get tired of hearing it, in all the different ways that people around the world find to make the old truths come alive. Things that seem impossible can happen. New life comes from what seems like death. Human beings can always become more than who they have been. It's a great story. And whether it comes with gefilte fish (homemade please—don't touch that stuff that comes in a jar!) and matzoh ball soup at the Passover Seder, or with chocolate bunnies and hard-boiled eggs on Easter, I'm always happy to take part in the celebration.
BY RICHARD GILBERT, MINISTER EMERITUS, FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH, ROCHESTER, NEW YORK
Listen to this article to Inspiration from Quest
A tomb is no place to stay, Be it a cave in the Judean 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 that have been away too long.
by Richard Gilbert, from his 1995 Meditation Manual, In the Holy Quiet of This Hour, published by Skinner house, and available from the CLF library (www.clfuu.org/library or 617-948-6150).
Last updated April 5, 2006
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