EASTER THROUGH A UU LENS
By Rev. Kit Ketcham, April 20, 2014
As
Frank and I worked together on this Easter service, we noted the many ways
human beings celebrate this time of year.
We recognize the Vernal Equinox, the changes in weather patterns, the shoots
of plants popping up in gardens and fields, the new lambs, calves, and
foals. Rebirth, even resurrection,
seems possible in the fervor of spring’s changing and sometimes tumultuous
conditions.
How
do we respond to the gleeful springtime promise which also brings the
uncertainties of weather and frequent natural disaster? Looking at this religious season
through a Unitarian Universalist lens tackles the problems of believability and
our quest for trustworthy answers.
Phyllis
McGinley, an Oregon-born poet whose heyday was the 40’s and 50’s, wrote
something I’d like to share with you as we begin. It’s entitled “Lament for a Wavering Viewpoint”, and it’s
one of my favorites.
I want to be a Tory and with the Tories stand,
Elect and bound for glory with a proud, congenial
band.
Or in the leftist hallways, I gladly would abide,
But from my youth, I always could see the Other
Side.
How comfortable to rest with the safe and armored
folk,
Congenitally blest with opinions stout as oak!
Assured that every question one single answer hath.
They keep a good digestion and they whistle in
their bath.
But all my views are plastic, with neither form nor
pride.
They stretch, like new elastic, around the Other
Side.
And I grow lean and haggard with searching out the
taint
Of Hero in the blackguard or of Villain in the
saint.
Ah, snug lie those that slumber beneath
conviction’s roof.
Their floors are sturdy lumber, their windows
weatherproof.
But I sleep cold forever, and cold sleep all my
kind,
For I was born to shiver in the draft of an open
mind.
Born nakedly to shiver in the draft of an open
mind.
My
conservative Baptist minister dad used to say to me, “Honey, don’t be so
openminded that your brains fall out.”
He’d say this on the many occasions when I’d defend some---to
him---indefensible act or position, such as my summer crushes on the cute boys
who came to Athena for pea harvest.
Or that living with one’s future mate before marriage might be a good
idea. Or that the war in Vietnam
was crazy.
I
never brought up my religious opinions, because I was pretty sure I’d get the
same response, and yet it seemed to me that there something worse than being so
openminded that my brains fell out.
It seemed to me that being so closed-minded that my brains dried up was
worse. But saying so seemed tantamount to accusing him of
dried-up brains, and that didn’t feel so good either.
As
a child, I depended on my parents and other trusted adults to tell me the
truth, whether that truth was about religious matters or grammar or history or
how to conjugate a Spanish verb.
They knew more than I did, and I trusted their knowledge. I trusted them to be right.
As
I grew older, I gradually began to realize that my parents and other adults
were telling me the truth only as they saw it. Though I knew that they had my wellbeing in mind, I also
began to see that they had received their version of the truth from still other
persons. Filtering this received
truth through their own experience, they had passed it along to me. How many people were there in this line
of truth-telling? Where did the
original people get their truth?
Well,
you know how adolescent minds work---always questioning, wondering, considering
alternatives. Despite all the good
advice available for free from parents, teachers, police, doctors---adolescents
prefer to work out their own truth.
“Yeah
but, Mom, I’d rather do it myself” became my refrain as I sorted through the
sources of wisdom that I knew about and looked for others that made more
sense. Which of course gave my dad
a chance to use his other favorite stock phrase: “A yeah but is a half-brother to a halibut”.
I
loved the romance and tragedy of the ancient Christian Easter story: Mary’s anointing of Jesus’ feet and his
acceptance of this act; the commandeering of a donkey for a triumphal ride into
Jerusalem; the overturning of the greedy vendors’ stalls in the temple; the
clever answer to the trick question “is it right for us to pay taxes to
Caesar?”; the chilling words spoken at the Passover Seder with his
disciples—“this do in remembrance of me”; the betrayal by a kiss from Judas the
disciple; the arrest in the garden and the subsequent series of denials from
Peter the disciple; a kangaroo court, a condemnation, a beating, a savage
public execution in front of Mary Jesus’ mother, and all his friends.
This
all felt completely believable to me.
As thrillers go, it ranks right up there with some of our best modern
stuff. It displayed human nobility
and human frailty in extremely clear detail. Shakespeare had nothing on the Gospel writers when it came
to drama and tragic endings.
But
that famous story as told in the Gospels of the Christian scriptures ends with
a twist---a twist which turns a human tale into a ghost story. Jesus’ body disappears from the tomb in
which it is placed. Angels appear
to the women who are searching for his body to cleanse and wrap it. Jesus the living person appears to his
friends in several places, vanishes again, and then reappears to offer them
advice about evangelizing the world, building an institutional church, and
living his teachings.
This
part of the story bothered me. A
lot. I didn’t know what to think
about it. All the ghost stories of
my youth notwithstanding, I didn’t believe people could rise from the dead. Surely there was another explanation.
In
studying the Bible as literature in college, I discovered that there were
actually several different versions of this story in the Gospels. Either it happened several different
ways or it didn’t happen at all or somebody made it up or at least embellished
it. Or maybe people dreamed
it. In any case, the entire
Christian tradition in all its many variants seemed to be built on a
supernatural foundation. Never
mind the perfectly sensible and inspiring events of Jesus’ life.
My
sources of authority---how I knew what I knew---began to shift dramatically as
I dealt with the ramifications of a possibly-fictional Easter.
I
met non-theistic friends who told me that Easter was proof that the concept of
God is absurd. What loving parent
would send a beloved child to be killed as a sacrifice? This God didn’t make sense.
Nor
did the Hebrew scriptures seem any less fantastic in their authority. Laws which mandated that wool and
cotton not be combined in fabric?
Which recommended death for a myriad of seemingly minor offenses? Which dictated laws of diet that
collided with modern science?
“You
shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free…” one of Jesus’ most famous sayings. We want to find truth, to believe the
truth, to be able to trust the truth we hear. We want to find reliable sources of authority, but we are
hard-pressed to find those reliable resources.
In
the daily news, we hear conflicting reports about international events,
domestic issues, political situations.
Even the best medical research offers us thousands of studies proving
both sides of any given subject:
butter is good, butter is bad; organic is good, organic is bad, estrogen
works, estrogen harms, fiber is good, fiber is overrated.
If
we followed all the studies available, we’d go nuts. So we sort things out according to our own experience. Uncle Bill had a heart attack and ate
lots of red meat and dairy products; therefore, too much fatty stuff is
probably not so good. We grow our
vegetables organically and have few pests or diseases and all we have to wash
off is the dirt; therefore organic is probably good.
The
jury is still out on many issues, but we’re wary----if the market says it’s
good, they’re probably saying so out of economic self-interest. Therefore it might not be so wonderful.
Religion
is a little tougher subject to sort out.
Many of us were raised to revere certain texts and authority figures as
sacrosanct, infallible, or at least metaphorically true, if not factual. The Hebrew Bible, the Christian
scriptures, the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita, Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths---these
are all sacred bodies of knowledge, revered by humans world-wide, accepted by
many humans world-wide as absolutely true.
Now,
we have come to Unitarian Universalism at least partly because we have a
problem with accepting a sacred written text or body of knowledge as absolutely
true. We have come to Unitarian
Universalism because we believe that our actions toward each other and toward
the earth and universe are more important than certain beliefs about God or the
creation of the earth or the lives of the Buddha or Jesus or Muhammed.
Yet
we still need authoritative sources of knowledge. What will they be?
How will we decide?
As
a religious humanist, I am convinced that human experience and wisdom can be an
authoritative source of my knowledge.
My own experience and wisdom are authoritative for me, but may not be
authoritative for others. I am
willing to accept the experience and wisdom of credible others, but I insist on
filtering it through my own experience and wisdom.
I
accept certain texts as authoritative---the Declaration of Independence is, for
me, an authoritative text, as is the Bill of Rights. Imperfect as they may be, they establish principles of
democracy that I believe to be right.
The Constitution---well, with the challenges it’s getting these days and
the current membership of the US Supreme Court---well, who knows?
As
a Unitarian Universalist, I find great wisdom and credibility within many
sacred texts. I do not consider
them historical documents and would not use them as the basis for a history
lesson. Yet these poetic literary
works offer me a great deal of universal wisdom: to treat others as I would be treated; to act with justice
and mercy toward others; to be generous with the poor and downtrodden; to love
freely and unconditionally; to express compassion and to work for freedom.
Our
UU principles are based upon the universal wisdom of many religious and secular
thinkers.
My
friend and colleague the Rev. Harold Rosen of Vancouver BC, in his book
“Universal Questions: Exploring
the Mysteries of Existence”, lists his methods for arriving at useful truth and
declares that each balances and complements the others.
He
lists as his sources of authority, how he knows what he knows, the following
methods. See what you think.
The
scientific method, the combination
of reason and experience applied to an idea.
Common
sense, a personal and practical
understanding of reality.
Tradition, accumulated patterns of thought and behavior, often
of enduring usefulness and patterns which define a culture.
Intuition, a sense about the way things are that leaps ahead of
ordinarily available information.
Artistic
expression, a way of seeing, hearing,
and feeling that is different from ordinary knowing.
Wisdom
teachings, useful axioms and
spiritual principles that can improve the human condition.
Revelation, direct communication of insights by prophetic persons
such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and others, both ancient and modern.
In
addition, Rev. Rosen believes that we are morally obligated to follow the laws
of our government, except when those laws violate universal standards of
justice.
So
what do we use as our sources of authority? How do we sort out truth from fiction, hype from reality,
ethical direction from self-serving manipulation?
Living
in a multicultural world, we are always called upon to interpret and evaluate
the sources of authority that bombard us.
We are forced to rely upon media reports of national and international
events that seem hysterical, inaccurate, and often evasive. We hear rumors and stories from friends
and family about other friends and family. And don’t even get me started on Facebook!
We
cringe at the proclamations of truth that we hear from certain groups: creation scientists, big corporations,
cults and many political organizations, fundamentalist religions and hate
groups. We step carefully through
our lives trying to live by our ethical and moral principles but always knowing
we don’t have enough accurate information to know for sure.
And
so we often become like Phyllis McGinley in her poem---chilled by the draft
from our open minds, hoping that our brains won’t fall out but hoping just as
much that our brains won’t dry up from too little openness.
How
do I know what I know? I find it
helpful to look at the things that I think I know “for sure” and tease out from
them the reasons that I know them with such certainty. And I find that almost invariably there
are common roots to my sense of certainty.
For
example, I believe deeply that Easter is a season to celebrate, that it is
meaningful, that its meaning has profound consequences for my life, and that I
neglect that meaning to my detriment.
Sixty
years ago, my conviction was based on my Christian upbringing. I believed that it was the day that
Jesus rose from the dead. My
parents and teachers had told me that this was the truth, and I believed
them. I found the story inspiring
and the great love and sacrifice it portrayed thrilled me to the core.
But
one day, Kit the teenager was sitting on a windy bluff early one gray Easter
morning with other youth as a single ray of sunlight pierced the clouds,
singing an old hymn about light and space and thunderclouds and storm and then
the words “it breathes in the air, it shines in the light, it streams from the
hills, it descends to the plain and sweetly distills in the dew and the rain.”
My
understanding of the truth of the Easter season changed at that moment, from a
concentration on the death and resurrection of Jesus to the ever-present,
all-embracing sense of wonder at the infinite divine which I saw at that
instant portrayed in the natural world before me. It was bigger than Jesus, bigger than I was, bigger than all
the doctrine I’d ever heard. With
its boundary-less, inclusive power, the Living Universe subsumed the Christian
message. And I would never again
be satisfied by a doctrine or a creed as my source of authority.
Today
I find the truth of the Easter season even more embracing as I understand the
true source of its meaning and power, the Living Universe that enfolds and
connects us all.
Our
celebrations in the spring of the year, of the Vernal Equinox, of Passover, of
Easter, all come to us out of the same source of universal truth: LIFE, the life which infuses us with
strength and inspiration and is revealed most fully in nature as we explore its
mystery and power.
Because
we are human, we have developed specific ceremonies to celebrate our sense of
mystery, of gratitude, of awe at the gift of life. We celebrate the renewal of the earth in spring, we
celebrate deliverance from evil, we celebrate the rebirth of love.
But
all our celebrations, all our joy and passion flow from a common source---our
recognition that life is sacred, in all its pain and all its triumph, that
living things all die and yet continue to live, whether in the fertile soil,
within our hearts, within works of creativity which outlive us, and in our
families and culture.
Yes,
we do use our reason to determine truth; yes, we do rely on human tradition for
continuity and connection. We
trust our intuition, we respect our artists’ work, we use our common sense and
our knowledge of wise words from many texts, and we pay attention to the
prophets we hear, to discern what truth they may offer us, even when we
disagree. And we trust most of the
laws of our land.
But
I believe that for virtually all of us, LIFE is our final authority. If it is life-giving, we can trust
it. Even when it hurts, if it
enhances life in its greatest form, we can believe in it. We sometimes get sidetracked by the
needs of daily living---money, possessions, luxuries, are these not life? No. They are only what we accumulate in our day to day
living. They are not life itself.
Life
itself is in the threads that connect us, in the relationships we have: with
one another, with ourselves, and with the Living Universe, or God as we may
understand God. Life is
indestructible, and it can be nurtured into a greater profusion of joy and
passion by our careful attention.
Let’s
pause for a time of silent reflection and prayer.
BENEDICTION: Our worship service has ended, but our
service to the world begins again as we leave this place. Let us go in peace, considering our own
sense of life and its gifts. May
we rededicate ourselves in love to Life, for ourselves, for each other, and for
the Living Universe of which we are a part. Amen, Shalom, Salaam, and Blessed Be.
