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"Those Whose Eyes Are Open"
Those of you who read the Middleboro Gazette have probably noticed that two columnists are currently engaged in a debate regarding evolution and creationism. Writer Dick McCarrick, in his column "Echoes and Visions" wrote an article entitled "How Did We Get Here?" last week. He noted that creationists, who believe that the Biblical account of Genesis is literally true, and that the universe was created in a single divine act 6,00 years ago, are still very much with us. McCarrick says there is physical evidence from virtually every science - biology, geology and astronomy to name a few, that the universe, the earth ,and life on earth, have been emerging for billions of years as evolution maintains. His point is that creationism, should not be given equal treatment in the schools because in order for Creationism to be right, nearly every aspect of modern science would have to be utterly wrong. This week a rebuttal came from columnist Cindy Dow in her "Out and About In Lakeville" column. Ms Dow takes the Bible as literally true and rejects the theory evolution as weak an unproven. She rejects the fossil record and argues that evolution and the creation story in Genesis should be written up in textbooks as equal possibilities since both are merely theories.
I'm not here to weigh in on that argument on this Easter Sunday. We're rather proud of our diversity of theological opinion, but I'm pretty sure there will be unusual agreement on this one. Liberal religionists were the very first to break away from believing in literal interpretations of the Bible. Unitarians and Universalists from way back have asserted that Jesus was a man, for example, and that religious belief need not rest or be defined by miracles that defy science. Ralph Waldo Emerson put forth, what to me is a most beautiful statement of the UU perspective as far back as 1838 in his famous Divinity School Address. He said:
"[Jesus] saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his world. He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, `I am divine. Through me, God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me...' But what a distortion did his doctrine and memory suffer in the same, in the next, and the following ages!.... The idioms of his language, and the figures of his rhetoric, have usurped the place of his truth;..... [They now say] "This was Jehovah come down out of heaven. I will kill you, if you say he was a man." . . .
Emerson also said, in that same address:
[Jesus] spoke of miracles; for he felt that man's life was a miracle, and all that man doth, and he knew that this daily miracle shines, as the character ascends. But the word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is a Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain."
For centuries now we have been a people that have chosen to reconcile our faith with science. There should be no contradiction. But here we are at a crossroads on the calendar where two wonderful religious stories - the miracle stories of Passover and Easter, converge. There are those that say first- to begin with, those are conflicting stories - how can you possibly recognize both ? And there are those who would wonder - they are miracle stories - if you don't believe that God literally gave Moses the 10 commandments on Mount Sinai, or rained down 10 plagues on the Egyptians, why tell the story? If you don't believe that Jesus literally rose up out of the tomb and was resurrected, what are you celebrating on this Easter/Passover holiday?
Those are fair questions, because we Unitarian Universalists do celebrate both these wonderful stories. As our candlelighting this morning made plain, both Passover and Easter are borne out of a history of the great suffering and pain at the heart of a people. Both faith narratives tell how, thanks to God, their ancestors were able to rise up out of suffering. These stories actually made these people a people. Both are stories of redemption and hope that tell us darkness can be overcome with God's guidance. (Now, even that phrase may be difficult for some of you, but we'll get back to that.) Neither of these stories would be particularly important if they were merely ancient history. For us their importance comes at the mythical level - the level which says that a story is true - has the potential to be true, for all people in all ages. The struggle out of bondage at the heart of Passover, and the desire to defeat death at heart of the Easter story, pertain to us, here and now, and so we do return to them again and again for what they can teach us. So what are we celebrating? What are we learning?
There are significant parallels in these stories. Both Easter and Passover are stories about intense suffering from out of which emerged a new religious understanding. Moses led his people from slavery, then to wander with his people in the desert for forty years. Judaism was born out of that Exodus experience as they sought the meaning of their covenant with God.
It was a Passover pilgrimage that brought Jesus to Jerusalem on the fateful spring of his death. Christianity was born when Jesus' followers, dazed, confused and heartbroken, struggled to find God, or meaning in events that would allow Jesus, the source of their highest understanding of the holy, to be so cruelly killed.
Both Passover and Easter celebrate journeys as a people emerge from the darkness. The Passover seder brings celebrants though the dark Exodus story and the wandering in the wilderness to the Promised Land. There is a wholeness to the seder experience in the way it incorporates light and dark. In the way our culture celebrates Easter, the darker side tends to get lost. Little children are considered too young to understand the mindnumbing crucifixion story which has become its center. Protective parents understandably want to spare their children knowledge of life's darkness for as long as possible. Thus, it's easy to understand why eggs, symbols of spring and rebirth since ancient times, were adopted as a fun and festive Easter resurrection symbol - along with bunnies, (associated with the fertility of spring because of their ability to produce so many young.) Eggs are an important symbol of rebirth, they are also a symbol of innocence. Our children are downstairs right now, enjoying an Easter egg hunt.
We celebrate these stories because they tell us something we need to know. It is possible to survive enormous pain and suffering. Everyone needs this knowledge. Did you have a time in your living memory when all good things were possible and your parents were invincible and it did not occur to you that you could be hurt? The children downstairs as they hunt for their eggs may be enjoying a time of innocence. That innocence goes away of its own accord. America's poet laureate, Billy Collins reflects on this loss of innocence in his poem:
On Turning Ten
The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I’m coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light—
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.
You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.
But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.
This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.
It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I would shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees, I bleed.
There is a yin yang/ dark and light quality to Passover and Easter. Neither would make any sense cleaned up with the pain removed. The central point of both of them for literalists is the miracle of God's intervention; the important truth for liberal religionists is its profound message that it is possible to emerge from horrible suffering whole, no matter how impossible that may seem. We need to know that this is true. This is good, practical conventional wisdom that makes survivors out of those who believe it.
When I was in high school there was one teacher who had a great capacity to touch kids, and who was very popular. She did amazing work among my peers and had a tremendous impact on me and many, many others. She was a self-possessed, competent and powerful presence among us. One day she shared with me that some years before she had seriously considered committing suicide, her life had been so dark and so bleak, and she had been so unhappy. I couldn't believe it. How could one's fortunes change so completely? I knew her story was valuable for me - if I ever got to the point of wanting to kill myself, I knew my thoughts would turn to this teacher, and I would remember to try to tough the situation out.
Passover and Easter both tell us that we can be knocked down - really knocked down but that, and this is the key message - the human spirit, with help, has the capacity to prevail.. The Passover and Easter stories, told and retold, are powerful mythic vehicles designed to help us internalize, to get us to believe - to know - that it is possible to suffer, to hurt, to be enslaved or lost, to experience the desert, to have no sense of direction, to lose what is dearest to you - your loved ones, your dreams - whatever holds you together - it is possible to die emotionally, to experience more than you think you can possibly bear, and to come out of it into new life. These are more than stories - used and celebrated properly , they constitute a religious practice. They are practical equipment to pull out when we are feeling lost on our journey. I'd like to read you the poem
After the Shipwreck
by Alicia OstrikerLost, drifting on the current, as the sun pours down
Like syrup, drifting into afternoon,
The raft endlessly rocks, tips, and we say to each other:
Here is where we will store the rope, the dried meat, the knife,
The medical kit, the biscuits, and the cup.
We will divide the water fairly and honestly.
Black flecks in the air produce dizziness.
Somebody raises a voice and says: Listen,
we know there is land
Somewhere, in some direction. We must know it.
And there is the landfall, cerulean mountain-range
On the horizon: there in our minds. Then nothing
But the beauty of ocean,
Numberless waves like living, hysterical heads,
The sun increasingly magnificent,
A sunset wind hitting us. As the spray begins
To coat us with salt, we stop talking. We try to
remember.
These stories are designed to help us remember. The Jews had been slaves, down and out. Life was impossible. So they escaped, wandered, suffered, feeling shipwrecked, in the desert for 40 years - but they made it! Their stories that told them they were special and promised them the promised land helped them remember - sustained them.
Think of the followers of Jesus and their despair. Jesus the most beloved person that each of them knew or had ever met, - killed by others like a common criminal - life can be so cruel. Why not give up? Emotionally they were shipwrecked, wondering what life was worth if that is possible..... they survived, prevailed. My own Unitarian Universalist perspective on this holiday is that Jesus died in the flesh. He didn't rise up physically and ascend to heaven, but his people did not die emotionally as the result of his physical death - their grief may have killed them in spirit, but it didn't. They remembered Jesus, held fast to his memory and believed in his teachings, and, out of that, and their love for one another, a new vision and new life, and a new people was born - these people were called Christians.
When we are shipwrecked we must know there is land even though we can't see it and we have no idea what direction it might be in.. When we are emotionally shipwrecked we must believe there is a future. Our stories help us with this. They tell us there is life after the desert, after the shipwreck, after emotional death.
But these stories attribute this life to God - how do we, as Unitarian Universalists square with that message?
There is a colleague of mine named John Gibbons who shared that there is a four year old in his congregation named Benjamin. Last week he and his father dropped into his office while they were out delivering Easter baskets to Ben’s friends. He was, Ben said…the Easter Benny! John said. "When I put on my thinking cap and sharpen my pencil and work out the calculations and do the analysis and the real brainwork, well, I place a lot more of my trust and confidence in the Easter Benny than I do in the theological equations that give us the resurrection or God or even the Easter Bunny himself. The way I see it most of the real work of the world—be it the works of creation or imagination or compassion or forgiveness—most of back-breaking heart-wrenching real work of this world gets done by the Easter Bennies—whether they’re the pagan Easter Rebecca’s, or the Christian Easter Mallory’s, or the Easter David’s or the Easter Boti’s or fill-in-your-own—or somebody else’s Easter-Benny-like name."
I'm with my colleague, John in believing that much of the work of reconstituting the world is in our hands. But I am open, too, to the inexplicable mystery in which we live. How could winter have been just last week, and the birds be singing out there in the warmth today?
Let's celebrate with Emerson this amazing miracle of a story in which we all play our part.