Dance and Choreography by Sarah Bush
Happy Easter!
I am glad you are here! Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins uses Easter as a verb.
In a poem he hopes the teachings of justice and compassion, the spirit of Jesus will enter our lives. He writes, “Let him easter in us.”
To Easter is to go forward, to choose to live fully and lovingly. Your being here is a signal of your eastering forth, your wanting once again to spring into new life. Welcome!
Easter is the first Sunday after the full moon after the vernal equinox. At the moment of the vernal equinox it is possible to stand eggs up on their ends. Some years ago this bit of information was told to one of my colleagues by a friend. My colleague looked up the time in the almanac. At 5:03 a.m., he was in the kitchen. He stood the eggs up on the ceramic cutting board. At 5:07 one of them rolled over, but he stood it back up again.
The eggs all stood up on their ends until 5:25 a.m. when he got tired of watching them and put them away. The next day he saw his friend again. She apologized, saying she had learned the story about the eggs was a hoax.
Many of us Unitarian Universalists approach Easter like a hoax. Somebody is trying to pull one over on us. Jesus rising from the dead is about as believable as the Easter Bunny.
I love to remember our son Ben’s friend story about Easter. As a child, Zach woke up early one Easter morning and didn’t find any eggs. His dad quickly got on the phone and began ranting about there not being any eggs at their house.
He said, “Well, I appreciate that. Thank you, Mr. Easter Bunny,” and hung up.
He reported to Zach that the Easter Bunny was getting right on it. Meanwhile, Zach’s mother had slipped out the bathroom window (moms will do that), run to the grocery store, purchased eggs, returned and hid the eggs—plain white, raw eggs!
Yes, Virginia, there is an Easter Bunny.
Throughout our lives we seem to need the eggs. Remember the story where the guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, “Doc, my brother’s crazy. He thinks he’s a chicken.” And the doctor says, “Well, why don’t you turn him in?” And the guy says, “I would, but I need the eggs.”
Woody Allen says, “Well, I guess that’s pretty much how I feel about relationships. They’re totally irrational and crazy and absurd, but we keep at it because we need the eggs.”
We need the eggs and any time someone does what was left undone, or does what needs to be done, repairs what’s broken or simply hangs in there, there’s the Easter Bunny.
Thirty years or so ago, I taught high school students English. I loved teaching. I tried to see each student’s unique gifts. I wanted to encourage each one. Kids who didn’t feel they belonged and cheerleaders and really smart kids hung out in my class room. I like to think the students thought I was a good teacher. Yet in teaching, in ministering, in life, we can fall short.
As one of ministerial colleague says about herself, “I’m not everybody’s cup of tea.”
One spring during my years teaching, our house was egged. Broken egg shells crusted the porch. Yellow yolks splattered down the stucco walls. It could have been a random event, but it was easy to feel targeted. Some of my students heard about the egging.
Our house was egged a second time. This time we woke up to discover all over the porch pastel plastic Easter eggs filled with sweet notes. I appreciated the second egging. I needed those eggs.
We human beings mess things up, but we hang in there because we need the eggs. We keep at our relationships and stay in community because hope springs eternal. We believe what’s broken can be repaired, what’s been left undone can be done. We believe everything can be all right, and we begin to act to make it so.
Unbelievable, but at the exact moment of the vernal equinox, my colleague stood eggs up on their ends.
In the Orthodox Christian liturgy for Easter Sunday, the congregation speaks, “For the resurrection’s sake, we will forgive one another everything.” If we didn’t forgive, we would be separated, secluded, as if sealed off in a tomb. For the sake of renewal and rebirth, we will forgive one another.
May I forgive myself for my shortcomings as a teacher, a minister, a parent, a partner…
May we forgive ourselves and each other.
Jesus turned betrayal and pain into forgiveness and compassion.
For the sake of renewal and rebirth, we will forgive one another. Forgiveness and compassion bring new life. And if you go to your death, forgiving and filled with compassion, you will have truly lived.
And if you go into the rest of your life, forgiving and compassionate, your old self will be shed and you will have new life.
What is the poetic truth of the Easter story? What is the metaphor?
Joseph Campbell says, “Jesus ascended into heaven and we should ascend too.” Rise up to a bigger perspective. Rise up to your loving self. Rise to your oneness with all that is.
There was a depth of being in Jesus over which death had no dominion. People still talk about him, tell his stories and learn from him. His parables, his teachings, his spirit continue.
This depth, this spirit is also in you and me.
While he was living, Archbishop Oscar Romero, who worked with the poor and the oppressed in El Salvador, said, if he was assassinated, he world rise in the Salvadoran people.
Reformer Joan of Arc, as portrayed by George Bernard Shaw, said she would rise in the hearts of the people.
Jesus rises in the hearts of his followers. As we live his teachings, he rises in us. The spirit of life can awaken in you and me. That’s the good news of Easter.
Maya Angelou celebrates the human spirit’s resilience in her poem Still I Rise,
She says no matter what happens, “Still, I’ll rise.”
She says whatever the past has been, “Still I’ll rise.”
“Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
I’m a black ocean leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling, I rise in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of…fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise…
I rise
I rise.”
Sometimes we surprise ourselves. We’re tired or feeling sad, yet we rise out of our beds. Tired parents rise up and offer children patience and attention. Family and friends rise up to care for loved ones who are sick or dying.
Sometimes we draw on resources we didn’t even know we had.
We rise up as individuals and whole communities to stand on the side of love and justice.
We rise up in body, in spirit, and sing “Alleluia, Alleluia.” When we ordinary people act in kind and compassionate and extraordinary ways, we rise.
To easter is to say “Yes” to the resilient power of the human spirit.
Any time someone looks sorrow in the face and opens to the mystery of what will follow, the spirit rises.
Any time someone does and says what’s needed, tries to repair what’s broken, or shows up, the spirit rises.
When we believe all shall be well again and begin to act to make it so, there’s new life.
When we forgive one another, there’s Easter.
Miraculous changes, turnings happen — seedlings to sequoias, caterpillars to butterflies, water to wine, night to day, winter to spring, timid people show courage, the weak become strong, the selfish turn generous. Individuals overcome limitations. Life comes out of death.
Jesus died, and people, who knew and loved Jesus, discovered death did not end their love for him.
What happens after death is more mysterious, more open. Love is stronger than death. Love lasts.
There is something indestructible in each of us, something that wants to be alive, wants to rise.
Just before his death, Jesus celebrated Passover Seder with his friends. They shared a meal, and by some accounts, they sang and danced. They sang and danced because life is sweet.
As Loren Eiseley says observing nature, especially birds. “They sing because life is sweet and sunlight beautiful. They sing under the brooding shadow of death….They are singers of life.”
Because life is brief and precious, we sing, not dirges, but anthems of praise.
There is life before death. Rise up. Rise and praise. Wake up and live.
Be not afraid. A new heart be with you. A new spirit. Roll away the stone and open your hearts to love.
Happy Easter!
The Reading is from Available Light by Marge Piercy.
When the night slides under with the last dimming star
and the red sky lightens between the trees,
and the heron glides tipping heavy wings in the river,
when crows stir and cry out their harsh joy,
and swift creatures of the night run toward their burrows,
and the deer raises her head and sniffs the freshening air,
and the shadows grow more distinct and then shorten,
then we rise into the day still clean as new snow.
The cat washes its paw and greets the day with gratitude…
Every day we find a new sky and a new earth
with which we are trusted…
We are given the salty river of our blood
winding through us, to remember the sea
and our kindred under the waves,
the hot pulsing that knocks in our throats
to consider our cousins in the grass and the trees,
all bright scattered rivulets of life.
We are given the wind within us, the breath
to shape into words that [can] steal time,
that [can] touch like hands and [can] pierce like bullets,
that waken truth and deceit, sorrow and pity and joy,
that waste precious air in complaints, in lies…
Yet holy breath still stretches our lungs to sing.
We are given the body…
We are lent for a time…
a morning every day, a morning to wake up
rejoice and praise life in our spines, our throats,
our knees, our brains, our tongues.
We are given fire to see against the dark,
to think, to read, to study how we are to live,
to bank in ourselves against defeat and despair
that cool and muddy our resolves,
that make us forget what we saw we must do.
We are given passion to rise like the sun
in our minds with the new day
and burn the debris of habit and greed and fear.
We stand in the midst of the burning world
primed to burn with compassionate love and justice,
to turn inward and find holy fire at the core,
to turn outward and see the world that is all
of one flesh with us,
see under the trash,
through the smog, the furry bee in the apple blossom,
the trout leaping, the candles our ancestors lit for us.
Fill us as the tide rustles into the reeds in the marsh.
Fill us as the rushing water overflows the pitcher.
Fill us as light fills a room with its dancing.
Let the little quarrels of the bones and the snarling
of the lesser appetites and the whining of the ego cease.
Let silence still us so You may show us Your shining,
And we can, out of that stillness, rise and praise.
Copyright © 2014, Rev. Barbara Hamilton-Holway. All Rights Reserved.
