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Roll Away the Stone
An Easter Sermon
A Sermon bythe Rev. Douglas A. Taylor
March 23, 2000
Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
There is a little joke about a Sunday School teacher
who was
trying to get the students to tell her about Easter. The kids
were all
mixed up about which rituals go with what holiday. One child
starts
talking about Easter candy, but gets it mixed up with some of
the
Halloween rituals. Another asserts that it is a religious
holiday, but
gets it mixed up with Christmas. Finally someone says, "On
Good
Friday, Jesus was crucified and he died. They put him a cave
in the
ground with a big rock covering the entrance. After three days
Jesus
got up and rolled away the stone, and if he sees his shadow
there will
be six more weeks of winter."
And so, it is Easter again, a sometimes confusing and
perplexing
holiday for us. It is one of the vestiges of our Christian
heritage, but
an odd one in many senses. We can safely say that Unitarian
Universalists are divorced from the Christianity of rituals and
magic,
as we sometimes see it. But so much of Easter seems to focus
on
those aspects of Christianity with its glorious resurrection
from death
and atonement for all the sins of humanity. I saw a T-shirt
once that
showed a somewhat graphic close-up of Jesus in agony on the
cross
while on the back it said "His pain, your gain." We don't do
that kind
of Easter in our churches. This conclusion naturally begs the
question, "What kind of Easter do we celebrate?" And it is
fairly early
in my attempt to answer this question that, at least for
myself,
confusion sets in.
And yet, many Unitarian Universalist churches have
record high
church attendance on the two high holy days of the Christian
calender:
Christmas and Easter. Christmas is not that big of a problem
for us.
A baby is born. That is the story. We Unitarian Universalist
like that
story because we can focus on a life beginning. What we like
best
about Jesus is his life and his teachings. But Easter is all
about his
death and according to the legends, his triumph over death
through
the resurrection. The Easter story is the pivotal story of
Christianity.
So, what do we do with Easter?
I recall this question was raised to me while I was in
school at the
Methodist seminary. Actually, at the time I was venting my
frustrations about a different holiday, Halloween, to be
specific. The
city of Columbus, OH had just decided that October 29th would
be
the date for that year's Halloween trick-or-treating. Other
parts of the
city and the suburbs choose dates also. The seminary decided
to do
it on the 30th. I was complaining in class that afternoon
about how,
"Where I come from we do Halloween on Halloween. Just like we
do
Christmas on Christmas, and we do Valentine's Day on
Valentine's
Day, and we do Easter on Easter!" The teacher looked at me
funny
and said, "Unitarian's do Easter?" "Well, sure," I said.
"What do you
do? I mean, what do you DO for Easter?" I
stammered a bit, "We,
uh . . . We do rebirth of nature and spring, and, uh, . . .
stuff like that."
Truth is, we usually ignore Easter's theological
component.
I know of at least one Unitarian minister who insisted on never
leading
an Easter service in his Church. It was in his contract that
Easter
Sunday would be done by the laity and he would stay home. So,
some
Unitarian's simply ignore the whole thing. A few of us have
kids, and
in that case Easter is about colorful eggs, Easter Bunnies,
candy, and
new clothes. Others dig back to Pagan roots and make it a
celebration
of spring and the "rebirth" of nature, with its daffodils and
tulips and
Easter lilies.
And I must say there is something to this. A perennial
symbol of
resilient hope is the way a tulip pushes its way up out of the
ground
yet again. Even if you put a rock over it, it will roll away
the stone
and rise up. These are tough little tulips! Durable and
reliable. So
reliable, in fact that we may lose sight of how hard their task
is. Every
year they die back into their bulbs, cold under the frozen
ground. In
spring we see them arise again. But as Maya Angelou, a
contemporary poet and author, once wrote, "One never knows what
it costs a bulb to split, a lily bulb or an onion, to split
open. And that
tendril to come out." (Restoring Hope, p. 189)
The egg, like the bulb, is a symbol for this holiday
and its message.
The Easter egg carries its symbolism from back before
Christianity.
(Again, the Pagans.) For the pre-Christian Pagans it
symbolized the
universe. It represented a complete and whole cosmos. It was
self-contained and perfect. We decorate it and celebrate it
now. But to
use it we must crack it open; we must destroy it. If we don't
it would
rot. This is, of course, assuming that it is not a fertilized
egg. Were
it fertilized, the chick inside would eventually need to
destroy its
universe from the inside in order to get out and survive. So,
too, the
Easter lily bulb must break itself open to allow that tendril
of life to
emerge.
Resilient hope is the power of life through struggle.
It is this
struggle that makes Easter so important, even to Unitarian
Universalists.
Paul Tillich, the theologian I often look to, says that
"the concept
of struggle [is] a symptom of the ambiguity of life." To be a
participant in life is to participate in struggle. There is a
destructive
side to life, this wrestling with and tearing down which occurs
in
tandem with creation and the emergence of life. If there is
any doubt
as to the truth of this concept of creation and struggle
conjoined,
witness a birth. It is a messy and painful process to allow
that life to
emerge. But as I mentioned earlier, Easter is not about a
birth. The
Easter story is about a rebirth, a resurrection.
Now we pride ourselves as a religion that looks to the
wisdom of
other religious traditions. We often read their stories and
recognize
what truths they offer. There are many examples of stories,
such as
the Easter story, which are true not because they are factual,
but
because of the deeper meanings they offer. In the Hindu faith
tradition there is the God Shiva who is the destroyer. Shiva
and his
fierce wife, Kali, clear the way for new creation, for Brahma.
The
Jewish community forms its identity through stories of exile
and
wandering in the desert. Often there are the references in
poetry and
religious writings of Christians and Muslims to the fierce
heat of the
metal smith's forge or the potter's kiln as an analogy for
life. The
searing difficulties faced in this crucible called life are the
very
experiences which cause us to live life more fully. Howard
Thurman
writes: "Openings are made in a life by suffering that are not
made in
any other way."
Ah, if only it were true that hardship always
makes you stronger.
I have been rereading a book by Howard Thurman lately called
Disciplines of the Spirit. In it he writes about
commitment, growth,
prayer, and reconciliation as different disciples of the
Spirit. He also
has a section on suffering; right there in the middle of the
book:
suffering. It seemed strange to me to think of suffering as a
discipline
of the Spirit. The first time I read the book I was wary, lest
the author
begin to extol the salvific virtues of suffering with a
grin-and-bear-it
attitude. But Thurman had no illusions about suffering. He
did not
glorify suffering or those people who suffer, as some Christian
thinkers do. He writes,
It is true that suffering tends to isolate the
individual, to create
a wall . . . that imprisons, and overwhelms the person with
self-preoccupation. It makes the spirit miserable in the
literal
sense of the word. Initially, it stops all outward flow of
life
and makes a virtue of the necessity for turning inward.
(edited
slightly)
All right, that is the kind of suffering I
know about. I can tell you
about the self-preoccupation which makes me miserable of
spirit, a
miser of life. I have felt that stone rolled across my
entrance, blocking
me off from life. Thurman recognizes that we do not just
experience
a bit of suffering and then emerge as stronger, more beautiful
people.
Its not a guarantee. He instead described a process of turning
in; a
process which could lead to death, by way of hoarding
life inward.
Sometimes the metal buckles and snaps in the heat of the
furnace.
Clay pots can and do crack and break in the kiln. Some people
are
taken down off their cross, placed in the tomb underground,
with the
stone across the entrance, and are not able to then roll away
the stone
and reemerge. And you may stay in this way spiritually and
emotionally dead for days, weeks, even a lifetime.
"Suffering tends to isolate the individual, to create a
wall. But if
you come to grips with your suffering," Thurman continues,
by bringing to bear upon it all the powers of your mind
and
spirit, you move at once into a vast but solitary arena. It is
here that you face the authentic adversary. ... You come face
to face with whatever is your conception of ultimate authority,
your God. (edited slightly)
This is a startling experience, to say the least.
Startling, but true.
"It is here that you face the authentic adversary," he writes.
"You
come face to face with whatever is your conception of ultimate
authority." And it is interesting to look at the play of words
and
concepts here. Paul Tillich often referred to God as the
Ground of
Being. This pointed to the concept of God as the basis of your
existence. The word ground is like the legal term, such as
grounds for
dismissal or something like that. God as the Ground of being,
the
foundation and reason for being. When Jesus was taken down
from
the cross he was laid in a tomb, in the ground. We could read
that as,
"he was laid into the foundation of his very existence." And a
great
stone was placed in front of the entrance.
When you come to grips with your suffering, when you
get your
hands on it, you begin to face questions concerning your very
existence and the deeper meanings of life. In this dusty tomb
you find
yourself in, you come face to face with the ground of your
being. One
can not walk away from that unchanged.
Now, this is the point I have been trying to get to.
There is
something happening in the Easter story that is larger than
perennial
tulips and the coming of Spring. Spring comes every year.
That's
how the seasons work. It is supposed to happen that way.
There is
no great surprise or feeling of relief among the people with
the
dawning of spring. Tulips come up out of the ground in spring.
That
is what tulips do. And it was a tulip last year, it's a tulip
year, and it's
going to be a tulip next year, too. It doesn't change. It
will always be
a tulip.
But in the Easter story, something did change. In the
Christian
cosmology, the entire process of the universe changed, and
suddenly
people could get into heaven, . . . according to some of the
more strict
interpretations. But we can look to this story as a true story
not
because it is factual, but because of the deeper meanings it
offers. For
Unitarian Universalist, it can be a story of major
transformation. It
can be a metaphor of the resilient power of life and of hope.
Where
there was only death, like Jesus, we can experience a
resurgence of
life from the very pit of our suffering. We can feel inward
growth
from the winter of our souls, from the tomb itself. Like the
lily bulb,
we can split our shell and allow the tendril of life to emerge.
Somehow the stone has been rolled away. The tomb is
empty. Be
not afraid, only tell the world:
"Wonderful things are indeed happening and Life has
prevailed
again!"
In a world without end, may it be so!
Amen.
.
Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
9601 Cedar Lane
Bethesda, Maryland 20814-4099
Tel: 301-493-8300
Fax: 301-897-5713
e-mail:n cluuc@his.com
Sunday Services at 10:00 a.m.
(one service only throughout the summer)
© 1998-2000, Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
The web site is being maintained by
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and Joe Perry
Last modified: Sun Jun 4 18:17:14 EDT 2000
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