First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis

Rev. Kendyl Gibbons
First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis
April 20, 2003

"Not only underground are the brains of men eaten by maggots." It's true; never more visibly than now. The day before yesterday in Baghdad they burned the libraries. Deliberate arsonists set blazes in the National Library and Archives, obliterating centuries of the written history of Iraq, and in the library of Korans at the Ministry of Religious Endowment, destroying priceless works of ancient art and intellectual history. American forces, though informed of the fires by frantic Iraqi librarians and curators, did nothing; the fires burned themselves out, and with them the tangible memory of a culture and civilization far older and arguably greater than our own. What maggot is at work in the brains of the human race? What arrogance and ambition, what anger and love of destruction, make us do things like this, and allow them to be done?

It is often said that religious liberals have an inadequate doctrine of evil; we like to celebrate life, we put our trust in human reason, we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person. We are tempted to think if we reject the myth of Jesus' resurrection as intellectually untenable, that we need not come to terms with the story of his crucifixion either. Surely in this year's fraught, despairing spring, it clear that if that is what we think, we are wrong. Crucifixion is as old an impulse of the human spirit as any of our aspirations, and we have yet to find the moral vaccination that would make us immune to its allure. Crucifixion is always the work of those who think they are doing what must be done; whose careful reasoning is unarguable, that it is better for one man to die that a whole people may be saved, even though it never actually works out that way. In fact, they do it as rationally as possible, those who crucify, and always with a great flair for just process and popular acclaim. From the Roman governors and Jewish Sanhedrin, to the Inquisitors and witch burners of 16^th century Christendom; from the Nazi ovens and gas chambers to the congressional subcommittees of the McCarthy era; from the atheist gulags of Stalin and the Chinese Red Army re-education camps to the Patriot and Homeland Security Acts, the act of crucifixion is always entirely legal, and is most often accompanied by shouting crowds, who cry "Crucify him!", though they know not why, and later wonder with shame how it was that they behaved like that.

Easter, my friends, is not just about April mindlessly strewing flowers over the ashes of our libraries, and the broken bodies of our brothers and sisters, and the wrecked ideals of our own humanity. Easter is about the crucifixion of those who are best among us, and what is best within us; it is a story that offers us a profound two-fold challenge, with authentic new life promised at the end - but it holds only trivia and grinning chocolate bunnies if we refuse to enter into its tragedy. The challenge is this: first, to recognize and acknowledge our own capacity to crucify, and second, to find a way to endure ourselves and the world through the day of crucifixion and beyond. How do we stand, powerless, at the foot of the cross while what we love with our whole hearts suffers and dies? Or how do we live with ourselves the morning after we have three times affirmed, "I do NOT know this man!"? Each of us knows all the parts in the unfolding of the Easter drama; they are the dynamics of a soul that is deeply challenged in its convictions, and must tread the narrow and dangerous path of integrity, or else be lost in the wasteland of fear, hypocrisy, and manipulated opinion. This is no ancient history; it is the stuff of our headlines and talk shows; it is shaping the history of the world for the foreseeable future.

Once upon a time, I thought that the sacking of libraries was a primitive anachronism, like slavery or suits of armor; I never expected to see irreplaceable collections of books burned in my own lifetime. Now I think that there are no boundaries to what we might yet see; now I know that my fellow citizens, and even I, might yell "Crucify him" as loudly as any first century Palestinian throng. Now the story of Easter is alive for me as it has never been before. How do I live with myself in this strange new, strangely old world? The elegant calligraphy of the Ottoman empire's records is ashes; gone from the world after centuries, never to be held in scholar's hands again. Children are dead, and dying; homes lie in ruins; the broken fingers of the tortured will never guide a chisel or coax music from a violin again. Young men and women from this very state, who will be my neighbors, who will raise the children of the next two decades, have seen things and done things of which they will never speak, but that will haunt their memories for the rest of their lives. The crucifixion is not legend; it happens every day; it happens before our eyes.

In such a world, what earthly difference do the silly daffodils make? "The sun is hot on my neck as I observe the spikes of the crocus; the smell of the earth is good. It is apparent that there is no death. But what of that? Not only underground are the brains of men eaten by maggots." What are we to do, then? Faced with this knowledge, faced with the human capacity for cruelty and wanton destruction, which long generations of civilization, education, morality, and reason have not obliterated, what shall be our response? Shall we surrender to our own basest impulses, as if it makes no difference what we do? Shall we lay all our hopes and ideals in the tomb, and roll the great stone of disillusion in front to seal them away from our apathetic, thread-bare lives? Shall we make caution our watchword, and fear our guide, and seek to accommodate the powers that we dare not challenge? Shall we let ourselves be separated from one another by our suspicions and our individual sufferings, allowing arbitrary authority to manipulate us with little promises addressed to our smallest self-interest? The point of Easter is that there is another choice; that we can live in the world with our ideals and the better impulse of the human spirit, but only if we pay the price, a price that is courage and endurance and in the end something that the centuries have named faith. Not the small faith of superstition and trivial absurdities, but the large faith that believes, in spite of the abundant evidence of crucifixion all around us, in what is possible for the human spirit and the human community. Easter summons us not to the easy faith, that refuses to see evil, contradiction, or suffering, but to the more difficult faith that bears its witness even in a world gone mad, that refuses to despair, that calls upon our shattered dreams and our wrecked hopes to rise again.

Reflection II:

If we are to live at all, we must live in a world that is crowded with both miracles and crucifixions; there is no escaping either one. It would be easier, of course, if it were only one or the other; if we could know ourselves doomed in a malevolent universe where we might as well curse, and drown our sorrows as best we can, or else secure within a wonder the complexity of which we might not comprehend, but the goodness of which we could trust. Instead, we find ourselves always in a situation of profound ambiguity, of glory and brutality, of suffering and beauty at the same instant. The lilacs bloom and the libraries burn in complete disregard of one another; only we, the fragile vessels of an insatiable longing for coherence and meaning, are sundered by the paradox. In this eternal tension, we must learn to practice resurrection.

Resurrection, when it comes, is one of the miraculous moments of life, but like all genuine miracles, there is nothing unnatural about it. It is not the undoing of death, but the triumph of life even in the face of death; it is the human spirit asserting its possibilities yet again in a world shattered by suffering, and in hearts broken by betrayal. It is our deliberate decision to rise again; to rebuild the connections of community out of nothing but our own capacity for good will; it is the choice to do justice and to love mercy even where those two commodities are held in derision and contempt. Real resurrection, the kind that brings forth new life and new possibility, is not something that happens to us, it is something that we do - out of a sheer, stubborn conviction that we can, and must. It is a practice, a way of being in the world, that sees the fullness of destruction and will not accept it as the last word of human possibility. To practice resurrection, we must be willing to grieve - grieve for the libraries, and for the children; weep for the ordinary people of Iraq, crushed once by tyranny and again by invasion; grieve for the lives of soldiers, everywhere and on all sides, laid down in the service of their friends and their nations. To practice resurrection is to bear the sorrow of all the suffering of humanity, and humanity's capacity to inflict suffering, and then to gather once more our determination that indeed the earth might be fair, and all her people one, and reach out one more time to make it so.

On such a day as this, it seems that the earth mourns with us, gray as the ashes of the holy books, chill as the hearts of those who have lost their loved ones, cheerless as the ruined cities of all the ages of human aggression and violence. Yet the earth has another message for us, if our spirits are open to it; look closely, and you will see the green spears of plants struggling up through the soil to the sun and air; look up, and you will see the swelling at the tips of branches. The thing that we must not forget is that it all comes with pain. The chick must struggle out of the shell; the mothers cry and bleed to give the little creatures birth, and some die of it; the sprout must heave itself through the mud; the leaf bursts with tearing from the bud, and there is no new life that does not have its cost in suffering. And so it is with our ideals, the hope of human kinship and the dream of freedom; if we hold them truly, we do not hold them without cost. And yet this thing happens within us; this holy, miraculous moment when we choose resurrection and redemption, when we choose life with all its pain, when we choose to move forward in history despite the cruelty and the bloody ages of oppression, despite the arrogance of power and the craven acquiescence of those who follow it. When we choose the common good over private gain, when we choose liberty over conformity, when we make one more attempt to establish the claims of equal justice, we are practicing resurrection. When we work for an inclusive community and seek to wage peace, we are practicing resurrection. It will not bring our lost loved ones back; it will not restore the treasures of history from the flames; it cannot promise that good will triumph in any permanent sense. All that the practice of resurrection can do is to keep the struggle going; to make a world in which evil and violence and stupidity and shame do not triumph either.

Is it enough? Is that mere witness of possibility sufficient to nourish the human spirit into purpose and courage and something approaching joy? Well, does it matter? The earth does not ask whether April is enough; it merely comes, every year, sodden and gray, pulling flowers out of its sleeves when we are not looking. What else should it do? What else can we do, but bear the weight of our sorrow, and turn again to the practice of resurrection? Come, then, my friends; let the earth be our teacher. Let it prophesy to us the fierce truth of springtime, the facing into pain that is the only path to new life; and the rising again, the stubbornness of life and the human spirit, that is faith. So shall we come at last to the heart of Easter, where each of us must choose, again and again, the practice of resurrection; hope over despair, peace over violence, truth over lies, kinship and compassion over the ancient impulse toward crucifixion. There we shall find, as the poet has said, if we have the vision and the courage for it,

Out of the dusk a shadow, then, a spark.

Out of the cloud a silence, then, a lark.

Out of the heart a rapture, then, a pain.

Out of the dead, cold ashes, life again.

Aspiration:

Let us remember in these moments of anguished failure of good will and mistrust of power,

Those great souls of all the ages who have wrought righteousness in their times,

And made the life we share more pure and beautiful and strong.

Let us remember in our confrontation with evil, violence,

and the worst of which humanity is capable,

That our hope and strength are not exhausted,

That there is life yet to be lived with fuller meaning and with gladder promise.

Let us remember in the early uncertain days of springtime

Earth's covenant of life,

And the new generations coming on, for whom the great adventure has not ended,

For whom we are called to hold high the dignity and divinity of the human spirit.

Let us remember when the lamp of our hearts grows faint

And we wander in the darkness,

That dawn will surely come, for this our world is always turning toward the morning.

Closing words:

Easter calls to us, out of the life and teachings of a prophet of long ago whose body was hung upon a cross, and dead and buried, but whose spirit speaks down the ages to proclaim:

Though love be crucified it shall rise again in a thousand million hearts not yet born,

In whose passion the power of love goes on and on.

Though truth be nailed to the scaffold it shall rise again and bespeak itself in a still, small voice

That will be heard above the harsh noises and clashing sounds of injustice and oppression.

Though a life of prophecy for peace be shut up in a tomb, with the stone sealed in place,

It shall rise again, haunting the earth with a persistent witness

That will be heeded long after the sound of marching armies has faded into the night, age after age.

Easter calls to us; let us unstop our ears, open our eyes, unseal our lips, lift up our hearts,

And sing humanity's most ancient prayer, for peace.

Children's focus:

What holiday is today?

Did anybody get Easter baskets? Anybody color eggs?

It's hard to tell from the weather today, but Easter is a very ancient celebration of springtime.

What things do you like about spring?

Today, grocery stores, but it used to be that people were running out of food by the end of winter;

happy in spring because they could plant new crops,

new animals were born, and the older animals started giving milk again.

Many people talk about miracles at Easter, and so I wanted to say something about miracles.

Some people think of miracles as something that happens that's unnatural,

that we can't explain or understand, or they think of a god that makes things happen.

They might even talk about god bringing someone back to life after they are dead.

Now, I don't think things like that happen;

I think that the world is a place that we can understand and explain,

if we look carefully enough, and think hard enough.

But, I still believe in miracles, because I think all the things that make life beautiful and special

are miracles.

I think that when it gets warm in springtime, and all the flowers bloom, I kind of understand how it works, but it still feels like a miracle.

I think that when I put a little hard brown seed in the ground, and a green living plant grows,

it feels like a miracle.

I think that when a bird sits on an egg, and after a while a little chick hatches, that feels like a miracle.

And I'm very sure that when each one of you was born, and when your parents saw you for the first time, it felt like the best miracle in the world to them.

All these things are perfectly natural, but the world is full of miracles if we look at it right,

and if we are willing to be happy about them, and celebrate them.

So I want to suggest that you look for things that feel like miracles to you this spring,

and point them out to other people, and share your happiness.

A very famous poet, named Walt Whitman, who was a Unitarian, made a poem about these kinds of miracles, so I'd like you to listen while Mr. Walker reads that poem for us.

Opening words:

Out of the dusk a shadow, then, a spark.

Out of the cloud a silence, then, a lark.

Out of the heart a rapture, then, a pain.

Out of the dead, cold ashes, life again.

Welcome, to our celebration of Easter in the humanist mode;

a celebration of the earth's ancient promise of new life in spring time,

and of the great souls in history whose testimony to the possibility of human community

stands deathless in our shared memory.

Here let the elements of our common life be lifted up in reverence and gladness,

for to the grateful heart, the ordinary miracles of the earth are holy,

the everyday gifts of love are holy,

the breath of our being is holy,

and so we come together, in rejoicing, reflection, and the renewal of spirit.